Wizards promised that they would reprint Modern staples, and Bob is such a card. So far they've delivered with the shocklands, but I would have also preferred Noble Hierarch in M13.
If I recall correctly Maro said they would print modern staples. That could mean that things like Tarmo and Bob do not get reprinted but we instead get things like Abrupt Decay, Loxodon Smiter, and Dreadbore.
Can someone help me evaluate this card? I don't know what resources to use or who to ask.
I've looked all over the auction sites for a square cornered ooze but have found none so far. Because of the playability, rarity, and scarceness of this card, my guess (on value) would be $450-$500.
Can anyone help me with a better evaluation or help me get in contact with someone who would be interested in it?
Card choices:
Mana Leak (or lack thereof): Day/Terminus/GftT take the spots of mana leak in this deck. I have thought about putting leaks in the sideboard for the B/U control match-up but I think better options exist.
Darkslick Shores: The mana base needs some testing. The deck wants as many blue and white sources as it can get but I don't know how many Scars-lands (especially U/B) it wants.
Elspeth Tirel: This is the one walker in the list I'm not sure about. She is in the deck as another lingering souls/timely reinforcements. Her ultimate will almost never be relevant but her other two abilities are really nutty. Make three guys, gain some amount of life, make three more guys, etc.
Thoughtscour: This is my main/secondary win condition. This is the card that will take advantage of Tamiyo's ultimate the most. Either I mill them two cards for every blue mana available or I basically draw three cards per iteration.
Sphere of the Suns: I could cut 2 lands, 1 timely and 1 onter card to run Sphere. Sphere allows turn 3 Soren/Day and Turn 4 Tamiyo/Gideon/Elspeth. It speeds the deck up and fixes my colors but it reduces my landbase and increases variance.
Overall this deck looks fun and is, hopefully, good.
I like despise as a sideboard option against wolf-run. We have trouble dealing with karn.
I would honestly be very interested in a double-blind study on trading. The biggest thing we would have to worry about would be the framing effect (other test effects should be considered as well).
We could set it up with both third and first person questions and have three different prompts (neutral, perceivabley good, perceivabley bad). We would have six prompts total. Then we estimate the magic card trading population so we can sample an accurate number of people. Then we would be off to the races.
Anyway, I think we have both argued our points and we needn't belabor our positions. I'm going to seriously think about your position because it is the most I have been challenged on the issue. Mostly, especially online, people just say something like "your a jerk" and move on without any real reasoning.
Again, good debate!
To ThatRedwood:
But one party didn't care about card prices until he/she learned about them. The spirit of your argument is correct though because the assumption doesn't hold up. Not to play apologist but there are other social boundaries being broken which I didn't list. Nonintervention is a big one. Socially people tend to not interrupt other people when they are in the middle of something.
I'm not trying to perform mental gymnastics to make myself feel better, I know where my moral compass points/is balanced. The game of Magic doesn't even register on that compass unless hate-speach/ignorance is involved; that has more to do with the participants than the game itself though.
Im usually pretty trusting with people I see alot and if im trading a card I know is worth somewhere around 5-20 bucks id just ask them hey whats this card worth, whats the card I want worth and then square up the difference so we can both be happy. The people who try to get "value" out of it and misrepresent the values at 100% differences. Saying my 8 dollar card is 4 and their 4 is 8 or more, might make a little in "value" but lose the chance to trade with me again, and lose the chance to borrow just about every card in standard and most of the modern manabases, especially "casually" and if they ever try to im going into ball buster mode.
That's a great way to deal with trading behavior you don't like because it discourages the behavior entirely. You are both taking personal responsibility and initiative in preventing/punishing trading habits you dislike so I can't fault you for it at all.
The "value" of card is easily determined by an average of after market prices. There is some subjectivity to it, but no more so than housing prices. You could "prove" the value in a court of law.
Both parties in a trade are vendors. The terminology is accurate. It is somewhat beside the point, but it is accurate.
I was under the impression that the vendor-purchaser relationship only existed for 'real property' (e.g. real estate, farmland, etc). If I'm mistaken, I'm sorry. I will only discuss things in which I am versed since you seem to have more experience than me regarding property law.
Unless card values are brought up in the discussion, by offering your Jitte for their Moat, you are representing it as a reasonable trade. Note that I said reasonable, not equal. Now, while "reasonable" is subjective to a certain extent, courts of common law recognize the principle of what an "average" person would consider reasonable. Contract law requires "fair and reasonable consideration" on both sides. Thus, a contract in which you sell your home for $1.00 cannot be enforced (assuming a normal home in a normal area) , which is why such transfers (as between family, for example) include a clause of "love and ...." as well as $1.00 consideration, so as they become legally binding. Yes, I am illustrating the point by bringing up a more extreme example, but you need only look at the preponderance of responses in this thread indicating the trade was "unfair" to conclude that the "average" person would not conclude the Jitte as fair and reasonable consideration for the Moat. The contract would thus be declared null and void. I'm not speculating regarding the judgement decision, I'm applying the principles involved to come to the correct one.
I'm not disagreeing that many of the people in this thread think that a trade like the one described in the OP is outside of their comfort zone but morality is not statistical and this thread is not an appropriate cross-section of magic players since it is completely self-selected, nonrandom, and only semi-anonymous.
Also while you seem to have a fair grasp of contract law many states might have a different standard set for barter law. I'm not negating your point, just offering something to consider.
Not everyone who looses to a Ponzi scheme looses their life savings. While the Ponzi scheme may have greater ramifications, from an ethical perspective defrauding someone of good and valuable consideration is morally wrong regarding of the size of the transaction.
Pedantic Correction: Loses.
This is again where we disagree. What type of fraud does magic trading fall under? Also, the value of magic cards is much more fluid that that of the housing market. I would be interested to see a precedent for trading collectibles and the law. I've been looking for one but haven't found one yet (not to suggest that one doesn't exist).
Would a pawn shop which offers someone 10$ for a Moat be liable for damages because there was not fair consideration between two parties? What if neither party knew the value?
A Ponzi scheme is meant to steal money from people which is not what my trading magic cards is doing. They are not even in the same moral hemisphere as far as I am concerned.
If you cannot correctly identify the moral implications of this activity, I really don't know what to say to you. It is clear that the vast majority of the community has clearly identified the activity as "wrong". Assuming that you know better is an act of Hubris, nothing more. It's time to admit you were wrong, and adjust your thinking.
Please stop this. We were having such a good discussion and now you have evoked the opinion of the masses (hoi poloi) to prove your point. "All these people think that what your saying is bad, so it must be bad." It is also not clear that 'vast majority' agree with you on this issue. You are using one thread with self-selected participants to generalize to an entire community.
In regards to the bold: It's not an act of hubris, it is the opposite. There are many different approaches to trading and morality. I don't presume to be an authority regarding either.
I don't disagree with you that many think that trading the way the OP describes is wrong, but you need to concede that there are many out there who believe that trading in such a manner has absolutely zero moral implications.
To close: Morality is not determined by the state, it is not statistical, and it is relative. Illegal does not mean immoral and I think that is where you were trying to argue from with some of your legal arguments.
I did not begin this debate to polemicize my position, I came to convince and be convinced. You made some great points legally but your arguments about morality were weak. Good discussion over all though!
Trading aggressively and aiming to make gradual profit through trades is fine. Saying to someone "well, I'm not prepared to let it go for anything less than X" after they've pointed out (using Scrye or any similar source) that "it's only worth Y" is also fine because there's always that extra subjective element to the perceived value of any given card. That's haggling, being honest about the fact that you're just looking out for number one, or even playing chicken if you want to look at it that way. They will look at what's on offer, consider how important it is to them to acquire the cards they want, and either take the hit or hold out for a better deal. They might even say "nah, I think I'll leave it" and close their binder, hoping this bluff will get you to offer that slightly better card they wanted. It might even work. It's just a question of who blinks first, and there's nothing wrong with this sort of thing.
Blatantly misrepresenting the value of cards by vast proportions, however, is something I am not ok with, and I really don't see how you could consider the OP's "here, take my Jitte for your Moat" example anything but immoral.
It's not a misrepresentation. If I pull out your Moat, you pull out my Jitte, and I say "is this trade ok?" absolutely no misrepresentation has happened. No prices were asked for, no lies were told, nothing of the kind happened (in the above hypothetical).
I do understand that you disagree with the practice but I don't see a substantial difference between trading for small profits over time and trading for larger profits right away. Either way I'm trying to maximize gained value.
You are confusing Theft and Robbery. Robbery is a crime requiring duress or use of force. Theft is using illegal means to acquire property. Neither duress nor force is a prerequisite for theft.
I will concede most of this point however I do not believe this would be considered theft either.
Legally, presenting a $15 card as fair consideration for a $300 card could be construed as fraud, which is a vehicle for theft.
That is not necessarily true because the 'value' of cards is not set as much as the value of other property.
While "let the buyer beware" is a recognized principle of contractual common law, there are limitations. If the vendor knowingly misrepresents or fails to represent the value of his consideration beyond what could be considered reasonable, he may be held liable.
This may be a quibble in terminology but the trader isn't a vendor. This is a private, person to person transaction.
There was no misrepresentation in the value of the cards. As a side point, I think that contractual common law would definitely apply here because a trade is a verbal contract.
I imagine most arbitrators, such as Judge Judy and the many non-famous people who run similar small claims arbitration courts, would uphold a suit claiming misrepresentation is this case, and rule that the exchange must be reversed, or fair consideration provided for the disparity in value.
I would rather not delve into speculation regarding judgment decisions. You might think that they would see it your way, I might think they would see it mine, and we end up going no where.
Besides the legal ramifications though, it's just wrong. You honestly need to check in with yourself if you can't see that. Taking advantage of someone's lack of knowledge in order to make significant financial gain is immoral, and responsible for an awful lot of grief and hardship in the United States today (see" Madoff Ponzi scheme, banking collapse, etc...).
Please don't make the mistake of equating losing MTG card value with losing your life savings. I understand your metaphor but it is a bit extreme. There is a difference between trading aggressively and a ponzi scheme. I will continue to disagree that it is immoral as well. Continued: I'm not saying that your way of trading is wrong, but it is not the way that I trade. I think we both have legitimate arguments but I don't know if one way is 'more right' that the other. As a final note on the quoted paragraph: you are not the arbiter of what is moral and what is immoral. What seems immoral to you may not seem immoral to me. Don't demonize the way I trade simply because you disagree with it.
Someone who has been out of the game for that long cannot reasonably be expected to have any idea how far card values have progressed. Back in the days of Moat, there really weren't any regular print run cards outside the power 9 for which huge (i.e. 3 figure plus) disparities in value existed . There is no reason they would have to expect a difference in that today.
Again this is a problem of personal responsibility. The person should know the value of his or her property.
Gaining some value on trades is fine. It's reasonable and fair and I've done it many times myself. but you need to make full disclosure. Everyone needs to understand what is going on. Otherwise, you're just a scammer and a ripper with no moral center, and I hope one day you get your just deserts - something like loosing all your cards on a plane trip sounds about right.
In regards to the first bold passage: Where is the line? Isn't it completely arbitrary? Shouldn't you consider making any profit via knowledge disparity to be immoral?
In regards to the second bold passage: There is no need to wish this upon me. I understand we disagree but I'm not the devil, I'm not the boogeyman, I just happen to believe in a slightly different way than you do.
Everyone has the right to advise other people in the free market. That's what free speech is all about.
But there are some social etiquette boundaries being broken by the OP, at least ones I have learned so YMMV. When two people engage in a trade, if they do not ask for help on card prices then it is assumed that they know or don't care about them.
You are also severely overestimating the altruism that is present in the free market. You know what someone well versed in free market economics would have done? Either they would have let the trade play out and then tried to engage in a trade with the OMO (Original Moat Owner) because he may still have valuable cards to be traded for or the OP would have made a slightly better offer on the moat. Atlas Shrugged is the capitalist manifesto and it outlines self-interest above all. It is a good starting point if you are seriously looking into studying laissez faire.
My last point, and this is a personal point, is that this is a Trading Card Game. To me trading has always been about getting the best value for the least value. It isn't a question of moral or immoral the same way that winning isn't a question of moral versus immoral. When I 'play' a trade I am 'playing' to win just like in a normal game of magic. I've traded for $1 Wastelands, $10 Bayou's, $1 Foil Unhinged Lands, etc. because trading is a game and a hobby.
Before the ad hominem attacks start: no I would not steal someone's wallet, bag, watch, or any property.
1) The person with the Moat simply can't be expected to know values, and it would be unreasonable to take advantage of the fact that they haven't played for so long/ played at a time where the card values/trading culture was not as cutthroat as it is now.
Back when he played smartphones didn't exist, SCG probably was some two-bit crappily coded site, and most players got their prices from Scrye or their LGS. That, and 20$ would get you an Underground Sea.
So why not ask for a scry magazine or ask the shop owner for prices? Why not do even a modicum of research online and find out there are dozens of places to price check cards? It is your responsibility to know what your property is worth, not anyone else's. Why not stop and ask values right then when the guy pulled out the moat? The Moat Owner was not a witless victim, witless maybe but not a victim.
2) The values are just so disparate. While you can make the argument that unbalanced trading is wrong no matter the value difference, losing 30$ or so in a bad trade is a lesson, while still bad and regrettable, and it's unlikely to make someone quit, rather, they'll be more careful and inform themselves on the prices in the future.
The value difference in the OP's situation is almost like stealing a Smartphone or other valuable piece of electronics from the guy who had the moat. That's a huge chunk of money for some people.
It's not stealing! People keep equating trade profiteering to stealing and it is not the same thing. Stealing implies the victim is helpless to stop the action (either because it is surreptitious or forced) and neither is the case here. The Moat Owner was willing to finish the trade, was willing to trade his property. It doesn't matter what the property is, the MO was under no duress and was not forced.
Untrue. Only the testprints from this strain have the Judgment symbol, which is why they are called "Judgment" test prints. The 8e ones have the Unglued symbol.
Except for the Birds of Paradise which had the judgment symbol and a few select cards with no symbol at all.
Let me know how the vault scourge is for you. I also disliked the Certarks but I was thinking about upping my count of Perilous myrs and emissaries. I do like the main deck ratchet bomb though.
So I'm going to bring one of these types of lumps to FNM.
I'm going to admit that I've never untapped with a Mindslaver in play, so I'm hesitant to play it especially with so much other new stuff going on.
However, Myr Battlesphere seems like it just doesn't do quite enough unless you get it out really fast on the Architect/Ramp plan.
So any particular opponents (and plays to keep in mind) where Mindslaver shines? And any particular opponents where I should almost always sideboard it out because it's just a 7-mana fog?
Any control or midrange deck I would leave slaver in. Reanimator as well. Tokens, depending on the build. If they are running elspeth and Garuuk I would leave it in. Those builds are usually slow enough that slaver can come down and wreck face. Any slower blue deck should also be fine.
I did end up boarding it out a lot against U/W tokens and Monored..
I'm liking a lot of the input I received so far, but I don't want the deck to lose it's lack of focus. It's intentional. Think of it like a pared down EDH deck, lots of redundancy for multiple avenues of attack. This allows it to easily switch gears should one avenue of attack be ineffective. Also, I don't want to lose Renaissance, either. That card won me almost every game it resolved in at the Open, so don't underestimate it's effectiveness. Like I said in the Deck Tech writeup, every card in the deck works toward at least two of the major plans except for some of the finishers.
I sleeved up your original list and did a bit of testing. My meta is full of monored so I cut thrun and ran a peace strider. I also shored up the board against monored by playing three more peace striders as well as two trees. I ended up dream crushing the undefeated monored player in round five because of peace striders, mortapod and Phyrexian Cores.
The deck works wonderfully, the only thing I want to try to shove in here is another tezzeret. Do you have any idea how insanely fun it is to Mindslaver lock someone with Tezzeret, Mindslaver, and Mimic Vat? That is a great interaction.
If I recall correctly Maro said they would print modern staples. That could mean that things like Tarmo and Bob do not get reprinted but we instead get things like Abrupt Decay, Loxodon Smiter, and Dreadbore.
Can someone help me evaluate this card? I don't know what resources to use or who to ask.
I've looked all over the auction sites for a square cornered ooze but have found none so far. Because of the playability, rarity, and scarceness of this card, my guess (on value) would be $450-$500.
Can anyone help me with a better evaluation or help me get in contact with someone who would be interested in it?
Thanks in advance!
If Noble is in then I will not be looking foreward to turn 2 geist of saint traft .
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Glacial Fortress
3 Darkslick Shores
4 Drowned Catacombs
1 Isolated Chapel
5 Island
3 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Evolving Wilds
3 Tamiyo, the Moon Sage
3 Gideon Jura
2 Elspeth Tirel
3 Soren, Lord of Innistrad
Removal:
2 Go for the Throat
2 Terminus
3 Day of Judgment
4 Lingering Souls
3 Timely Reinforcements
Recursion:
4 Snapcaster Mage
Win Con:
4 Thoughtscour
Card choices:
Mana Leak (or lack thereof): Day/Terminus/GftT take the spots of mana leak in this deck. I have thought about putting leaks in the sideboard for the B/U control match-up but I think better options exist.
Darkslick Shores: The mana base needs some testing. The deck wants as many blue and white sources as it can get but I don't know how many Scars-lands (especially U/B) it wants.
Elspeth Tirel: This is the one walker in the list I'm not sure about. She is in the deck as another lingering souls/timely reinforcements. Her ultimate will almost never be relevant but her other two abilities are really nutty. Make three guys, gain some amount of life, make three more guys, etc.
Thoughtscour: This is my main/secondary win condition. This is the card that will take advantage of Tamiyo's ultimate the most. Either I mill them two cards for every blue mana available or I basically draw three cards per iteration.
Sphere of the Suns: I could cut 2 lands, 1 timely and 1 onter card to run Sphere. Sphere allows turn 3 Soren/Day and Turn 4 Tamiyo/Gideon/Elspeth. It speeds the deck up and fixes my colors but it reduces my landbase and increases variance.
Overall this deck looks fun and is, hopefully, good.
I like despise as a sideboard option against wolf-run. We have trouble dealing with karn.
We all have bad days, I understand.
I would honestly be very interested in a double-blind study on trading. The biggest thing we would have to worry about would be the framing effect (other test effects should be considered as well).
We could set it up with both third and first person questions and have three different prompts (neutral, perceivabley good, perceivabley bad). We would have six prompts total. Then we estimate the magic card trading population so we can sample an accurate number of people. Then we would be off to the races.
Anyway, I think we have both argued our points and we needn't belabor our positions. I'm going to seriously think about your position because it is the most I have been challenged on the issue. Mostly, especially online, people just say something like "your a jerk" and move on without any real reasoning.
Again, good debate!
To ThatRedwood:
But one party didn't care about card prices until he/she learned about them. The spirit of your argument is correct though because the assumption doesn't hold up. Not to play apologist but there are other social boundaries being broken which I didn't list. Nonintervention is a big one. Socially people tend to not interrupt other people when they are in the middle of something.
I'm not trying to perform mental gymnastics to make myself feel better, I know where my moral compass points/is balanced. The game of Magic doesn't even register on that compass unless hate-speach/ignorance is involved; that has more to do with the participants than the game itself though.
That's a great way to deal with trading behavior you don't like because it discourages the behavior entirely. You are both taking personal responsibility and initiative in preventing/punishing trading habits you dislike so I can't fault you for it at all.
I was under the impression that the vendor-purchaser relationship only existed for 'real property' (e.g. real estate, farmland, etc). If I'm mistaken, I'm sorry. I will only discuss things in which I am versed since you seem to have more experience than me regarding property law.
I'm not disagreeing that many of the people in this thread think that a trade like the one described in the OP is outside of their comfort zone but morality is not statistical and this thread is not an appropriate cross-section of magic players since it is completely self-selected, nonrandom, and only semi-anonymous.
Also while you seem to have a fair grasp of contract law many states might have a different standard set for barter law. I'm not negating your point, just offering something to consider.
Pedantic Correction: Loses.
This is again where we disagree. What type of fraud does magic trading fall under? Also, the value of magic cards is much more fluid that that of the housing market. I would be interested to see a precedent for trading collectibles and the law. I've been looking for one but haven't found one yet (not to suggest that one doesn't exist).
Would a pawn shop which offers someone 10$ for a Moat be liable for damages because there was not fair consideration between two parties? What if neither party knew the value?
A Ponzi scheme is meant to steal money from people which is not what my trading magic cards is doing. They are not even in the same moral hemisphere as far as I am concerned.
Please stop this. We were having such a good discussion and now you have evoked the opinion of the masses (hoi poloi) to prove your point. "All these people think that what your saying is bad, so it must be bad." It is also not clear that 'vast majority' agree with you on this issue. You are using one thread with self-selected participants to generalize to an entire community.
In regards to the bold: It's not an act of hubris, it is the opposite. There are many different approaches to trading and morality. I don't presume to be an authority regarding either.
I don't disagree with you that many think that trading the way the OP describes is wrong, but you need to concede that there are many out there who believe that trading in such a manner has absolutely zero moral implications.
To close: Morality is not determined by the state, it is not statistical, and it is relative. Illegal does not mean immoral and I think that is where you were trying to argue from with some of your legal arguments.
I did not begin this debate to polemicize my position, I came to convince and be convinced. You made some great points legally but your arguments about morality were weak. Good discussion over all though!
It's not a misrepresentation. If I pull out your Moat, you pull out my Jitte, and I say "is this trade ok?" absolutely no misrepresentation has happened. No prices were asked for, no lies were told, nothing of the kind happened (in the above hypothetical).
I do understand that you disagree with the practice but I don't see a substantial difference between trading for small profits over time and trading for larger profits right away. Either way I'm trying to maximize gained value.
I will concede most of this point however I do not believe this would be considered theft either.
That is not necessarily true because the 'value' of cards is not set as much as the value of other property.
This may be a quibble in terminology but the trader isn't a vendor. This is a private, person to person transaction.
There was no misrepresentation in the value of the cards. As a side point, I think that contractual common law would definitely apply here because a trade is a verbal contract.
I would rather not delve into speculation regarding judgment decisions. You might think that they would see it your way, I might think they would see it mine, and we end up going no where.
Please don't make the mistake of equating losing MTG card value with losing your life savings. I understand your metaphor but it is a bit extreme. There is a difference between trading aggressively and a ponzi scheme. I will continue to disagree that it is immoral as well. Continued: I'm not saying that your way of trading is wrong, but it is not the way that I trade. I think we both have legitimate arguments but I don't know if one way is 'more right' that the other. As a final note on the quoted paragraph: you are not the arbiter of what is moral and what is immoral. What seems immoral to you may not seem immoral to me. Don't demonize the way I trade simply because you disagree with it.
Again this is a problem of personal responsibility. The person should know the value of his or her property.
In regards to the first bold passage: Where is the line? Isn't it completely arbitrary? Shouldn't you consider making any profit via knowledge disparity to be immoral?
In regards to the second bold passage: There is no need to wish this upon me. I understand we disagree but I'm not the devil, I'm not the boogeyman, I just happen to believe in a slightly different way than you do.
But there are some social etiquette boundaries being broken by the OP, at least ones I have learned so YMMV. When two people engage in a trade, if they do not ask for help on card prices then it is assumed that they know or don't care about them.
You are also severely overestimating the altruism that is present in the free market. You know what someone well versed in free market economics would have done? Either they would have let the trade play out and then tried to engage in a trade with the OMO (Original Moat Owner) because he may still have valuable cards to be traded for or the OP would have made a slightly better offer on the moat. Atlas Shrugged is the capitalist manifesto and it outlines self-interest above all. It is a good starting point if you are seriously looking into studying laissez faire.
My last point, and this is a personal point, is that this is a Trading Card Game. To me trading has always been about getting the best value for the least value. It isn't a question of moral or immoral the same way that winning isn't a question of moral versus immoral. When I 'play' a trade I am 'playing' to win just like in a normal game of magic. I've traded for $1 Wastelands, $10 Bayou's, $1 Foil Unhinged Lands, etc. because trading is a game and a hobby.
Before the ad hominem attacks start: no I would not steal someone's wallet, bag, watch, or any property.
So why not ask for a scry magazine or ask the shop owner for prices? Why not do even a modicum of research online and find out there are dozens of places to price check cards? It is your responsibility to know what your property is worth, not anyone else's. Why not stop and ask values right then when the guy pulled out the moat? The Moat Owner was not a witless victim, witless maybe but not a victim.
It's not stealing! People keep equating trade profiteering to stealing and it is not the same thing. Stealing implies the victim is helpless to stop the action (either because it is surreptitious or forced) and neither is the case here. The Moat Owner was willing to finish the trade, was willing to trade his property. It doesn't matter what the property is, the MO was under no duress and was not forced.
Except for the Birds of Paradise which had the judgment symbol and a few select cards with no symbol at all.
Any control or midrange deck I would leave slaver in. Reanimator as well. Tokens, depending on the build. If they are running elspeth and Garuuk I would leave it in. Those builds are usually slow enough that slaver can come down and wreck face. Any slower blue deck should also be fine.
I did end up boarding it out a lot against U/W tokens and Monored..
I sleeved up your original list and did a bit of testing. My meta is full of monored so I cut thrun and ran a peace strider. I also shored up the board against monored by playing three more peace striders as well as two trees. I ended up dream crushing the undefeated monored player in round five because of peace striders, mortapod and Phyrexian Cores.
The deck works wonderfully, the only thing I want to try to shove in here is another tezzeret. Do you have any idea how insanely fun it is to Mindslaver lock someone with Tezzeret, Mindslaver, and Mimic Vat? That is a great interaction.