been hearing this probably too much for me to ignore at this point, a bunch of people are saying that modern right nwo rewards you for playing a linear, less interactive deck more so than playing control decks, which leads me to a question.
I've pretty much been playing URx control/tempoish decks since I've been playing modern (mostly Grixis variants,I had a bit of local success with GDS and control early last year and won a GPT late 2016 with Jeskai Nahiri), so I'd like to think I'm okay at those types of decks. Currently on blue moon and finding it's reasonable. I really love casting JTMS and LOTV
But I also have a rough dredge list together but I have no clue really how to play the deck. On the one hand, modern can really reward getting the reps in and playing what you know. but on the oter hand, people are saying linear decks are the place to be right now
what's the best call?
Both are true. If you put in the reps and tune your deck you can do moderately well with just about anything, because of this the format is so diverse and it's because the format is so diverse that you should play a linear deck. The format is to open to have game against everything, rather than try to meta against everything the safest option is to just do your own thing and try to have just enough generic disruption to stall your opponent long enough to win. Storm decks have Remand, Humans have Kitesail Freebooter, Affinity has Galvanic Blast. All of these cards disrupt your opponent just a little and can still be used to advance your game plan. I play Jeskai control because it's the deck I love. I put in the reps and I pilot my deck well. Counterspells give me broad answers so I never get caught with my pants completely down. Now even with all that said I know it's impossible for me to have game against everything. Decks like Dredge, Lantern, KCI, Tron, and Amulet Titan can all be rough matchups. I'm not completely dead against any of them but I also can't sideboard against all of them and still have slots to sure up my other match-ups post board. So every time I go to a big event there is always a match-up or two that I am just hoping doesn't come up.
I think Jeskai is in a really good spot right now honestly. The only thing I think it needs is better counter magic. This isn't legacy. This format doesn't need Wasteland, Preordain, Force of Will or Daze. Some of these would either help other decks more than control or would actively hurt control.
It's mostly played for the card filtering spells like Opt, Serum Visions, Sleight of Hand, and Thought Scour. Snapcaster Mage is a powerhouse and it's definitely the backbone of control. Jace, Colonnade, and Teferi are great wincons. It's got some cool artifact stuff like Tezzeret and Whir of Invention.
The only thing the color is really lacking is good counterspells. The speed of the format and the diversity of threats make it nearly impossible to line your counters up with their threats properly. Too often you'll Cryptic Command is too slow and Mana Leak falls off too soon. Spell Snare and Negate have targeting issues. Logic Knot is the best thing we have right now but getting it fueled up on turn 2 isn't always possible and it occasionally suffers the same problem as Mana Leak.
I think a better question is why do you need repeatable artifact & enchantment removal. What is actually giving you trouble here? Most of the multiple use stuff is either over costed or so narrow in application it isn't good enough for modern.
I guess we need a turn one answer like fatal push or magma spray for the initial attackers.
You DO NOT NEED to run a 3rd color like red for Magma Spray or black for Fatal Push, that will not make your deck better, it will make the mana worse and overall your deck will lose more games than if you just run answers to creatures using white which has an amazing array of cards available now.
This is total nonsense. Have you played a three color Approach? If you had you would know that a 3rd color is easy to add and gives extra options. The deck is NOT worse. Where do you get this from?
Did you actually read what I said in the first sentence, you should because you quoted it.
Running a third color just to add a one-mana removal spell in that color is total nonsense. Such as splashing red just for magma spray or shock, or splashing black just for fatal push or another removal spell.
If you want to splash a third color for a finisher type card such as The Scarab God (splash black) or The Locust God (splash red) then maybe it is doable, but not for 1 or 2 mana spells.
Also any deck that is running 3 colors instead of 2 colors is inherently more prone to mana issues and a control deck cannot afford to miss a land drop or have the wrong mana in the first 4-5 turns when it needs to stabilize the board with a wrath type effect, therefore it is not advisable to play a 3 color control deck if you can play just a 2 color control deck just fine.
Have you ever heard of Esper Dragons? One of the best control decks recently. And there are multiple Approach decks in Esper and Jesaki. You shouldn't be advising people that three color decks are worse. When this is clearly not the case. Just because you can not run a three color control deck successfully against the scrubs at your local LGS does not make the deck bad.
Esper dragons is a different deck from a different era, that comparison isn't valid. As for splashing a third color I am solidly against it. I was playing Jeskai before UW and I found that the added power of Magma Spray, Harnessed Lightning, and The Locust God just didn't make up for the inconsistencies that I had with the mana. The fact that the only enemy color lands in standard right now are the fast lands is just really rough. Approach is a deck that really wants it's 5th, 6th, and 7th lands to be coming into play untapped and the fast lands make that difficult some times. While Esper does look much better than Jeskai it still doesn't change the fact that you'll need to run more tap lands to accommodate that third color.
Squabbles Trading Cards in Glen Burnie Maryland has changed their name to match their online name. It is now the MTG First Game Center. They do Legacy every Thursday and often have other Legacy events on the weekends.
Looks like Ben nikolich is in top 8 with his jeskai draw go list, I seen he was on nahri over ajani which is interesting.
List is here. I actually greatly prefer this version to the Queller versions that have been springing up lately. I wish I could talk to the guy to get some insight on it. Particularly Search for Azcanta. I know a lot of pros have their eyes on it, I saw Ali Antrazi playing it at the team constructed open in Baltimore and Shaun put out some videos on it over on SCG. I'm just still not entirely sold though. Everyone thought Nahiri+Emrakul was amazing until the metagame got smart to it and then we heard similar things about how As Foretold was going to revolutionize control. Admittedly Search looks way better than either of those but I haven't played enough games to be sure of it myself.
I'm not terribly excited about two color themes so I'm considering tri-color themes instead. Only problem is I'm stuck on Bant. I've got 9 other themes picked out, relatively happy with them but Bant has me stumped. Everything I think I could do with Bant I'm doing with some other color. I was thinking about switching +1/+1 counters from Sultai to Bant since I know white gets some cool stuff but then I would need a new Sultai theme.
When it cones to lands C16 was the exception, not the rule. They said during C16 spoilers that they have a sort of rule against reprinting rare lands in the Commander decks. They broke that rule for C16 because they didn't want slow clunky mana bases interfering with how the decks are supposed to play.
In regards to the OP you have to remember that the primary goal of these decks is to be fun and provide a sort of jumping off point for new players looking to get into the format. Playability is the most important thing for them. What cards need reprinting and what cards will go in Legacy both take a backseat. The 56 rule might seem arbitrary but they are likely trying to conserve design space, force themselves to be more creative, and/or lighten their workload.
Decks that are want to be on the draw are few and far between. The point is to even things up so that whether you are on the play or the draw you're not hugely disadvantaged. The decks that already want to be on the draw will benefit more from it of course but none of those decks are so strong that I believe this will create problems.
Chiming in even though I haven't read the whole thread yet.
I've talked about this subject with my friends a lot in the past. Going first is such a huge advantage that no player will ever choose to go second in this game outside of rare corner cases like Dredge. I think the solution is to increase the advantage given for going second. In Go they have something called Komi. Komi are free points awarded to the player going second to offset the disadvantage. Komi did not always exist, it was added into the game and since it was added it has been increased several times. Right now in Magic the player going second gets to draw first giving them the advantage of an extra card however when they mulligan their extra card advantage has been taken away, the same is not true for the player going first. When you are on the play, even if you mulligan, you still have the advantage of being on the play. To remedy this my suggestion is that the player on the draw receives a free mulligan. I think the advantage of a free mulligan in addition to the extra card might not only be enough to offset the advantage of going first but it may actually incentivize players to go second.
1) All 4 of those cards cast the copy. It doesn't matter that it is a copy; it matters that they are being cast. Since they are, Basandra shuts them down during Combat.
2) Players are not forced to pay a cost to attack so if there is a cost, they can ignore the ability. However, note that if one player has Prison and another doesn't and they can attack the second player, they must do so. They can't say they are attacking a player then not pay the cost because they are then not adhering to Basandra's requirement. They would either need to pay the cost or attack someone else.
If all players have a Ghostly Prison effect, the second ability on Basandra doesn't do much.
Thank you. This is kind of what I figured. I'm a little bummed there is no way to cheat with Basandra but I'm not exactly surprised.
I think next year will be a sort of "Best of Commander" theme. They'll have 4 or 5 decks and they'll just combine themes from the previous years. So we'll see Experience Counters, Partners, Eminence, and Planeswalker Commanders. There will be a little bit of everything from all the Commander products up until now. That's my theory anyways.
I'm planning on building a Commander deck around Basandra and I wanted to be sure of a few things first before I wasted a bunch of card slots on interactions that don't actually work.
Regarding her first ability is there any way to cheat and cast things during combat with her out? By putting spells onto the stack without actually casting them perhaps. So far I've come up with Isochron Scepter, Sunforger, Windbrisk Heights, and Spinerock Knoll. Do any of these actually work?
Regarding her second ability how does it function with Ghostly Prisonlike effects? I know in a two player game you can just choose not to pay and you wont have to attack but what if there was another player that didn't have any such effect? If there is another attack option can they still just say that they would attack me but they don't have to because I have a Ghostly Prison?
Both are true. If you put in the reps and tune your deck you can do moderately well with just about anything, because of this the format is so diverse and it's because the format is so diverse that you should play a linear deck. The format is to open to have game against everything, rather than try to meta against everything the safest option is to just do your own thing and try to have just enough generic disruption to stall your opponent long enough to win. Storm decks have Remand, Humans have Kitesail Freebooter, Affinity has Galvanic Blast. All of these cards disrupt your opponent just a little and can still be used to advance your game plan. I play Jeskai control because it's the deck I love. I put in the reps and I pilot my deck well. Counterspells give me broad answers so I never get caught with my pants completely down. Now even with all that said I know it's impossible for me to have game against everything. Decks like Dredge, Lantern, KCI, Tron, and Amulet Titan can all be rough matchups. I'm not completely dead against any of them but I also can't sideboard against all of them and still have slots to sure up my other match-ups post board. So every time I go to a big event there is always a match-up or two that I am just hoping doesn't come up.
It's mostly played for the card filtering spells like Opt, Serum Visions, Sleight of Hand, and Thought Scour. Snapcaster Mage is a powerhouse and it's definitely the backbone of control. Jace, Colonnade, and Teferi are great wincons. It's got some cool artifact stuff like Tezzeret and Whir of Invention.
The only thing the color is really lacking is good counterspells. The speed of the format and the diversity of threats make it nearly impossible to line your counters up with their threats properly. Too often you'll Cryptic Command is too slow and Mana Leak falls off too soon. Spell Snare and Negate have targeting issues. Logic Knot is the best thing we have right now but getting it fueled up on turn 2 isn't always possible and it occasionally suffers the same problem as Mana Leak.
Esper dragons is a different deck from a different era, that comparison isn't valid. As for splashing a third color I am solidly against it. I was playing Jeskai before UW and I found that the added power of Magma Spray, Harnessed Lightning, and The Locust God just didn't make up for the inconsistencies that I had with the mana. The fact that the only enemy color lands in standard right now are the fast lands is just really rough. Approach is a deck that really wants it's 5th, 6th, and 7th lands to be coming into play untapped and the fast lands make that difficult some times. While Esper does look much better than Jeskai it still doesn't change the fact that you'll need to run more tap lands to accommodate that third color.
http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=117663
Bant -
Esper - Artifacts
Grixis - Control
Jund - Madness/Hellbent/Discard
Naya - Auras/Hexproof
Mardu - Tokens
Temur - Midrange/Ramp/Fatties
Abzan - Reanimator/Graveyards Matter
Jeskai - ETB/Blink/Twin
Sultai - +1/+1 Counters
In regards to the OP you have to remember that the primary goal of these decks is to be fun and provide a sort of jumping off point for new players looking to get into the format. Playability is the most important thing for them. What cards need reprinting and what cards will go in Legacy both take a backseat. The 56 rule might seem arbitrary but they are likely trying to conserve design space, force themselves to be more creative, and/or lighten their workload.
I've talked about this subject with my friends a lot in the past. Going first is such a huge advantage that no player will ever choose to go second in this game outside of rare corner cases like Dredge. I think the solution is to increase the advantage given for going second. In Go they have something called Komi. Komi are free points awarded to the player going second to offset the disadvantage. Komi did not always exist, it was added into the game and since it was added it has been increased several times. Right now in Magic the player going second gets to draw first giving them the advantage of an extra card however when they mulligan their extra card advantage has been taken away, the same is not true for the player going first. When you are on the play, even if you mulligan, you still have the advantage of being on the play. To remedy this my suggestion is that the player on the draw receives a free mulligan. I think the advantage of a free mulligan in addition to the extra card might not only be enough to offset the advantage of going first but it may actually incentivize players to go second.
Thank you. This is kind of what I figured. I'm a little bummed there is no way to cheat with Basandra but I'm not exactly surprised.
I'm planning on building a Commander deck around Basandra and I wanted to be sure of a few things first before I wasted a bunch of card slots on interactions that don't actually work.
Regarding her first ability is there any way to cheat and cast things during combat with her out? By putting spells onto the stack without actually casting them perhaps. So far I've come up with Isochron Scepter, Sunforger, Windbrisk Heights, and Spinerock Knoll. Do any of these actually work?
Regarding her second ability how does it function with Ghostly Prisonlike effects? I know in a two player game you can just choose not to pay and you wont have to attack but what if there was another player that didn't have any such effect? If there is another attack option can they still just say that they would attack me but they don't have to because I have a Ghostly Prison?