No offense, you can't 2:1 split stuff like perish/massacre. At minimum you should pack 2x because you're not storm where you can expect to grab that lone copy of a sb card. It works with bounce because you're packing 3x bounce overall. It does not carry through to dedicated spells. Sure, you have filter, but you're living a pipe dream believing your 1 of 75 odds can grab the spell when it's needed. If Mystical were involved, I'd eat my words but because that card is long gone, you need 2x of a spell to realisitically see it. You run 1x targets in the board because the deck is designed to tutor/find them. This does not carry over to spells.
I think the 1x for massacre is fine because of what it does, its like the 3rd perish in a lot of situations but is slightly different has some different utility, it's the same idea as running 3 bounce split 2:1 or discard or any other split like that. Against decks like Mav you side in all 3, the perishes are better but the Massacre serves a unique purpose, over all you'd rather have the perish but the massacre is a non 0 increase in percentage for the situations in that match up where you really need it, like against their occasional thalia draw.
Additionally it's a flexible card against a deck like Death and Taxes or variable white weenie builds where perish is useless. Obviously you don't want to dedicate a ton of hate to decks like that, but they invariably show up and it isn't damaging my green deck match up by making the split. We do run a lot of dig and draw in the deck to boost the probability of finding the 1 of cards. Basically with the perish/massacre split I'm shoring up my aggro matches where all three are good (Mav and zoo mostly) but giving myself just that minor percentage boost against various white decks and the ability to beat the thalia draw which perish is basically dead against (3 mana is hard 4 mana is almost not happening).
its sort of the same idea as splitting echoing truth and wipe away, or in my case chain of vapor and echoing truth. They're all bounce spells and most of the time serve the same purpose, but the added flexibility is not negligible and those minor percentage points that they add to a match up shouldn't be ignored, at least in my opinion.
I understand with mystical tutor being around (i wish) it'd obviously be an easy argument to make, but even without tutor finding ways to have redundancy while also adding a bit of flexibility is really useful in covering diverse match ups with a sideboard that has very little wiggle room.
my feeling is that Chain of Vapor is better in the control matchups, which incidentally end up being our worst match-ups. The bounce effects in general seem less good against maverick since they run Mother of Runes and it looks like they're moving to running Thalia, Guardian of Thraban as well. Thalia does actually make the matchup a bit harder and probably bears out the massacre tech being worth at least 1 slot in the board as a 0 cost way of dealing with her.
There are corner cases and some matches where echoing truth is better and I concede to that point and am going with a 2:1 split on them. Wipe Away just seems like it's too slow right now and as an answer to Karakas seems fairly poor if you aren't about to win exactly that turn.
As of now I think a 2:1 split for the bounce spells makes a lot of sense for control matches.
I'm also leaning strongly to a 2:1 split between perish and massacre. Right now leaning to 2 perish for it's wider utility against decks like combo elves and enchantress in general, but massacre is an excellent anti thalia card as mentioned above, beats scavanging ooze if they drop him before having a way to pump him, and is a good catchall against white weenie style decks. This logic leads me to believe perish is the more important one, but it's very narrow choice between how to make the split. I definitely feel they should both be there right now going into the GP however.
I think Truth is the best thing available. It wipes all copies of a card so you're always looking at x-for-1 (x=1 and above) whereas other bounce spells are only 1-for-1. Spell snare is an issue, but so is REB, alternative countermagic, etc. All top decks in the moment suffer from truth. I do not like Vapor because they can sling it back and bounce your creature. Whoops. Now you're up a creek.
If you want 1-on-1 bounce, wipe away is the best call (split second means it's going through) but it's a higher cc to cast. I'd rather see a split of truth/wipe than truth/chain. Personally I'd go 3 truth and call it a day.
I understand your argument, however the situations where bouncing multiple copies of the same card is important seem really seldom. Typically I find myself using it to bounce graveyard hate (which often just gets cracked in response). In those cases it's incredibly important that my bounce spell does not get countered, at 1 mana that means it's easier to pay for spell pierce/daze and it dodges spell snare. I tried wipe away as well, and I do like the safety of split second, but cards that cost 3 mana are risky propositions as is.
Also if we're running E.E. that goes miles to handle goblin tokens/zombie tokens in large numbers as well, I could see maybe doing some kind of a split between echoing truth and chain, but chain's flexibility at 1 mana has been a big difference.
The only draw back situation is when I need to bounce something to push the last bit of damage, at which point echoing truth is better for the "sac a land" reason you cited. So perhaps splitting 2:1 alone chain and truth or even chain and wipe away might be good for when those situations arise.
Who else is actually going to Indy with this deck? I won't be down till Saturday morning but perhaps we can meet up and discuss notes between rounds.
I'm taking it and I'll be there friday afternoon if you want to do any kind of comparing of notes I'll obviously be on site saturday. It's probably useful to compare notes here too though with scrutiny from others.
Something I discovered in testing, chain of vapor actually seems better than echoing truth right now. Primary reason: everybody has gone back to spell snare.
The issue is that if you're bouncing something you probably really need to bounce it and having it immune to at least one potential counter spell is nice. Also it costs 1 mana which is entirely relevant when you're bouncing a guy so you can then entomb + reanimate or other such combinations.
My Enchantress matchup from a while back...you might see some weird matchups like this at a large event like Indy. http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/19622891 (video playback sometimes craps out)
Again, it depends what you're SB-ing against. Duress x3 immediately makes control matchups easier. Because you can only put your eggs in so many baskets, you're going to suck against certain matchups. Also remember if you try to face everything out there, you'll be horrible -- spreading yourself too thin. Gotta pick your battles.
As for everything else, there's a limit to how much the internet can hold your hand. At the end of the day you make decisions and choose what's good. Period. You should scout the GP prior to submitting the decklist. There might be a huge showing of
Between the morningstar posts, and your arguments for her inclusion I'm feeling convinced on sheoldred for the relevant matches.
By debate between perish and massacre basically rests on whether the free and thus early/anytime nature of massacre is better than the basically guarenteed sweep of perish but with it coming much later since 3 mana can often take until turn 4-5 with only 17 lands.
There is also the possibility that engineered explosives + echoing truth might be overly redundant at 5 copies split between the two since they do fill similar rolls (killing tokens, removing gy hate) the difference being echoing truth hits wider swath and EE is a more permanent solution to what it hits.
Beyond those few tensions, and the fact that I kind of want duress just a little bit, I like where it's sitting for at least the next battery of tests.
This seems to run really well main board and feels at least presently optimal.
The board is working out a lot better, although I find there are some awkward sideboard decisions right now, I feel like it might be worthwhile if we can get a discussion started about possible sideboard decisions to be made for match-ups. Not a strict guideline per-say since I'm very against being overly specific, but something to chew on because I feel like I'm being slightly suboptimal about my boarding decisions.
My testing today showed what a distinctly awful matchup hard control really is. I played against a landstill deck packing innocent blood and it was an absolute nightmare, all of the cards were basically the worst thing possible and i was never even close to ahead.
Question for consideration: How fast are you willing to go for the combo? Do you do it the minute you have it regardless of protection or do you tend to wait for protection longer? Obviously if you have protection it makes sense to shoot. This is mostly only applicable to the control (blue decks) matchups, but I never like waiting a long time personally and usually go for the combo rather aggressively since I feel like the longer we wait against a good control player the worse our chances of pulling it off become. Never the less I'm tossing this one out into the aether for everyone.
So basically: when do you go for it? what are your sideboard considerations? let's see if we can find a consensus
I dunno, I think cursed scroll is pretty decent but Im not comfortable with it as a replacement.
I do however like perish.. that is highly being considered for gp indy. but Im gonna have to test the hell out of it.
Yeah i ended up putting totem (which is what I assume you meant?) aside for the moment in favor of perish/massacre split im testing right now. So far they seem much better, notably they're good even after we reanimate something if we get locked into blocking some big threats perish does clear the way.
Right now my split 2:1 favoring perish as massacre is really only better in the early part of the game (and generally trades 1 for 1 straight up but sometimes gets a dryad arbor for value).
Are KotR, Karakas, Maze of Ith, Pridemage, Jace TMS, Crypt, Relic, Nihil Spellbomb, Scavening Ooze enough reasons to run it then?
Apparently you weren't following the previous pages discussion, the fact that you just listed so many targets is exactly the reason you don't want to run them anymore. Notice in particularly that KotR, Karakas, Maze, Pridemage, and Ooze are all in the same deck. Pithing needle is exactly junk against Maverick as a deck. On that note notice that Jace and stoneforge + batterskull and sometimes karakas and crypt as well are in Stoneblade.
The exact problem with needle is that it is too narrow of an answer, on top of that it's negative card advantage since you waste an entire card on locking down one possible answer. Needle was fantastic when we only had to worry about if they had Crypt or Relic, even if you had to worry about Karakas too having only 2-3 targets made pithing needle much more potent.
Now you can have a needle in your opener and maverick plays turn 2 ooze against you, you needle it, and they play KotR. So unless you had a great nut draw with pithing needle, entomb, and reainamte for a non legend shroud guy, you're dead. However if in this circumstance you had Perish for instance, you can wait for them to play out the KotR, kill them both and be very safe. Or if you went the Cursed Totem route (which I think i'm now abandoning but still think is viable) you play that and you locked everything out except for Karakas.
The point is you want an answer that is widely effective. Echoing truth/bounce spells are solid answers for Crypt/Spellbomb and you have show and tell to get around those as well. You can also use the Exhume trick to bait them and win around them.
The real threat to us is not the narrow gy hate, we aren't dredge, the problem for us is how super efficient cheap creatures like KotR and Stoneforge Mystic are. it turns out we have a super difficult time beating a resolved batterskull through counter magic. Also it turns out KotR can tutor up Karakas and bog and also can get bigger than most of our big guys.
The problem is that we need to out class super efficient creatures, pithing needle does not do that and in fact leaves KotR around to continue to beat down. Remember our best reanimation spell Reanimate, causes a loss of life, that's particularly problematic against KotR decks.
Pithing Needle is a relic of the past as far as this deck is concerned, it's sticking around because at one point it was a fine answer and it's just being auto included in the board because "everyone else has it so why not me?"
Realistically Legacy as a format is a lot different than it was even a year ago and if we don't question things that used to seem inalienable we're going to fall behind. There is a reason reanimator has been unpopular lately, that reason is because the angles that attack us are really diverse and we still choose to run super narrow answers to diverse attacks. The solution we're advocating here is to run more broad answers in order to improve the quality of our direct answers.
by running a card like Massacre, or totem, or perish what you in effect do is make you echoing truths and angel of despairs better answers. You can depend more readily on those cards to answer the creatures while angel and friends can clean up karakas, or jace, or whatever remaining threat they don't cover. This ends up maximizing your sideboard against a greater number of potential matches where pithing needle was essentially doing nothing.
you can't afford to cut pithing needles from your SB guys. With how much burn is around, and how many people are running Fae Macabre, pithing needle is a champion.
I actually entirely disagree on this point. Faery macabre is definitely not enough reason to pack needle. Additionally it's actually a problem for Burn when they have to side a bunch of non burn spells in. Realistically every time they draw a faerie that's ~3 less damage we're taking which definitely buys us time. Also it does nothing against show and tell if you were inclined to bring that in (and I think I would).
The same goes for any pyroblasts they might bring in, everything non burn they bring in is diluting their burn plan and favoring us as long as we play smart. I really consider Burn one of the easiest over all matches honestly.
No problem man. Always down to share my thoughts. I'm home on Spring Break and if I didn't have so much grad work I'd probably meet up with all the MTGS people at Indy. I'd bring Reanimator because I think it's a house...so I'm down to share all my insight.
I analyze decks from the realistic/pessimistic side of the spectrum. You aren't always going to nail someone on the table + protection turn 2. If you can do that constantly, please teach me how lol.
I'm from the reanimator camp that likes 8 creatures. 8 is just enough to dump people AND have lots of spells/utility around to hold off the opponent. 4 of a creature is A LOT to run. That's half your creature lineup. Things get problematic with Jin because he's a legend and you never want to run into the awkward moment of "gee I have Jin on the field already" (which in most cases...like 90% of the time....you're probably going to pull ahead/win). Seriously though, 3 Jin is all you need. You'd want to increase diversity somewhat. I like Despair as the 4th Jin slot in your list because she's vindicate with boobs...err....a flying 5/5 body. There are times you need that 'catch all' OR you need to balance the table. Batterskull/Karakas are particularly annoying. Cutting the 4th Jin IMO is not only realistic, but probably a better call. You can boost your lineup game 1.
With the exception of Jin, I believe the next best creature to dump at any given moment G1 is Iona. She shuts it down and can give you that "oops I win" from nowhere. More on her later....
4 ponder + 4 bstorm gave me too many shuffle effects. 2 ponder I felt I needed MORE. 3 ponder + 4 bstorm was the happy place. That's 7x manipulation/filter.
When I say "too much" I mean: you cast ponder to reveal brainstorm, land, ponder again. You're losing actual spells for excessive manipulation.
*I'm also open to switching to Preordain because it's the same speed as ponder. It digs only top 2 but you can split [good] with [crap]. I'm sure there's a debate on here but the bottomline is that 7 manipulation is "enough". Anymore and you make finding actual spells problematic. Just my mentality.
Well this is the designer's challenge. What do you like? I think thoughtseize is a friggin house. You can ALWAYS take something from them leading off with this turn 1 (not to mention look at their hand). There are strategic benefits to thoughtseize in particular (reanimate their discard, etc). These have been discussed in depth.
My mentality about MD SnT (this is what I'm thinking):
"Your list runs 1x Thoughtseize MD which I find pointless. No this isn't a flame, this is me being blunt with design choices. You might as well run a miser's show and tell, which would actually do something to advance your strategy." Thoughtseize or any discard needs to be run in multiples. If you don't want to run discard in the main, you need to tweak the MD because you're altering a component of the deck. The choice is ultimately up to you.
If you really wanna push SnT maindeck (2x or something), you subsequently need to increase the creature count to prevent 'whiffing' on your own SnT spell. I've seen 2x SnT main + 2x SnT sideboard before.
Definitely some good points here. I agree Needle is just jank at the moment. Totem is interesting when you explain it in reference to being very "all-in" against Maverick. If that deck is kicking you around + you think it's going to show up in droves, do what it takes to stomp it. I'm not entirely sold on Totem but you bring up interesting thoughts. From my point of view, My "all-in" against Mav would be Perish as 2-3x + EE 2x. I'd rather wipe the table and then worry about what I do next VS shut down creature abilities but still keep them on the table. Neither of us have a better answer than the other (not looking to say I have a better plan)...it's just a different angle to handle the deck.
I think I mentioned this before but this matchup can be garbage no matter how strong you come out. The UWR absolutely owns me. The best advice I can give is (a) have lots of luck pulling a solid hand of 7, (b) be hyper aggressive in advancing your plan, (c) don't let them sit around and draw cards. My friends told me I misplayed HARD at my last event a few months ago because I let the opponent back into the match. Unfortunately there are times when you -- no matter what -- can't win. They have hands of Force, Force, Bstorm, Snare, REB, Swords. You lose no matter what.
Discard is nice to have but I wouldn't worry too much about it. You're either in the fight or you're gonna die trying. The key here is somehow getting lucky and landing a spell coming through. Game 2/3 is abysmal.
My Maverick post-board:
Jin / Despair (can swap for shroud guy if I have one in the SB) / Iona / Blazing / Sphinx / Sheoldred
I aim for that whether it's the correct lineup or not. Iona does damage naming white and only a KOTR --> Karakas can change up your odds of winning from there. Jin is "eh" in my experience but his upside is just tremendous. He takes STP/PTE in the face.
I don't find red Akroma relevant because she can't hit them AND defend. That's the biggest downfall of the card.
Yea np. Sheoldred is in the same league as Jin against a lot of decks. She's vulnerable to removal but builds disgusting card advantage. If you pass the turn with Sheoldred, they immediately have to sac a creature. 1 less threat to deal with. Landing her early means dryad arbor bites the dust. Aggressive lines of play for Maverick means turn 3 Progenitus with an empty board just got easier.
For RUG/Delver/SFM/mirror, Sheoldred on the table is dirty. Only SFM decks pack legitimate removal a la STP to really change my odds of winning. The mirror gets silly, and these tempo decks drop like flies because they're running low threat densities. I'll concede delver punching me in the face once if it magically had to be sacrificed the next turn.
For random situations, Sheoldred also drops critters with shroud. I had my feature match against Enchantress where Sheoldread ate Argothian. Sometimes these weird situations pop up and it's just extra goodies in the basket.
Then we look at Sheoldred building up your army out of nowhere. This is where most people spend their time thinking the card is win-more. If you get 1 reanimation from her, she essentially acted like Jin in terms of advancing the strategy. Swampwalk also goes unnoticed. It's another thing we tend to forget.
Overall, Sheoldred is almost equal to Jin in that it's long-term card advantage. I will NOT say the two are exactly equal because Jin does different stuff and his effects are slightly faster. However, wheeling back to your turn means THEY sac'ed a dude and you GET a dude. That's silly. Sometimes you 'whiff' on a trigger (ie; they have no men or you have no people in the 'bin), but you're increasing that inevitability we want. Even if they keep dropping threats turn after turn, you can sit back at let them sac it on upkeep. Sheoldred is a huge stop-gap. I'm a huge advocate because Sheoldred is just a great card to put out there. It's not auto-win, but neither is Jin. A lot of our targets die to spot removal. It happens. But the overall effects of the card vs gamestate + long-term are interesting. I'd test with it. It undoubtedly isn't for everyone. Worst case is that she doesn't make your 75. No big.
As with any tournament, you gotta pick what you plan on facing THEN pick the cards to help you beat the snot out of them. What are you planning to face? This will clear up issues/reservations you have.
It sounds like you want to tear it up against Mav and SFM stuff. Massacre is an 'all-in' against the weenie aspects of plains-based decks. In a pinch, it CAN be used against goblins or something, but you can't get the free cost. You should avoid redundant cards in the SB because you only have 15 slots. That's why I think your Inkwell + Akroma-R isn't the best plan. They do the same exact thing against the same scenario/deck. 2 seems unnecessary. Having cards that compliment is one thing. You gotta sift through the 75 and believe everything has a purpose. This is the most frustrating part of deck building and it's why we go online here and discuss. My advice is to plan wisely.
Your explanation of why to go to 3 Jin's is incredibly compelling, I'll shift back to 1 angel of despair main for the reasons discussed. I also agree that 8 is the correct number of targets. When running a 60 card deck it puts us on something like that a 15% chance to draw any target if none were in the opening hand, with an extremely high percentage to have 1 in the opening hand in some combination. Going to 9 doesn't meaningfully increase this statistic but going to 7 reduces our options to significantly so the math from a stat/comb perspective seems to corroborate this.
The ponder discussion likewise confirms my earlier data point of brainstorming/pondering into too many of the same spells. I do want to do some testing with preordain as well. One of my main problems with ponder was always the situations where I kept the 3 because i really needed that reanimation spell even though I wanted to dump the next 2 brainstorms coming up. Preordain at least lets me dump garbage. I also like the fact that preordain sends the cards away to the bottom so even though I'm seeing 1 less card on average I know that when I blind draw my odds of seeing something i just sent away are very much reduced.
I find your thoughtseize argument pretty compelling as well. I feel like main deck show and tell would require a reinventing of the core deck list that I just realistically do not have time for with only a week left running up to the GP. It is an interesting idea that might bear some exploration as the present decks that run Show and Tell main are doing so without making any real adjustments to what it means for the deck. So I think 2 discard might be just fine main deck with another 1 in the board, again 3 feels optimal in this case.
For the next couple arguments I guess it's important to frame the meta-game discussion. I'm prepping this for the GP as previously stated, as such I'm expecting RUG Delver, Stone Blade, and Maverick to be the most popular decks in roughly that order. Beyond that I expect the typical tier 1 to be present but not in enough that I can even bank on playing against each 1 time in a typical day 1. I feel like the popularity and relative ease of access to those 3 decks should ensure I play each of them at least once if not the potential for playing 1-2 of them twice.
As a result of that estimation I want to make sure that I'm well positioned against those decks to some degree. The Delver matchup already feels very positive from my perspective I'm not sure what your thoughts are but I found that preboard it was massively in my favor and post board their threat density is still low enough that even though I have to fight through more permission (sometimes counterop packages) I at least had cards like EE and echoing truth to fight back and it still felt like a positive match-up.
Maverick in testing it depended on the deck. I played against a variant that went very all in on Oozes and that was a nightmare match-up, however the more traditional builds and the punishing fire variant were all just about auto wins game 1 with more of struggle game 2 based on their sideboard composition.
The stoneblade match up is miserable in general as you indicated and is actually my number 1 point of concern for improvement here. Even game 1 still feels like it's 50-50 at best with the post board games feeling close to unwinnable without substantial luck.
With those meta points in mind, Engineered Explosives, Echoing Truth, and Show and Tell seemed like the top priority sideboard cards since they have the widest application in all of the major matchups I expect.
As for the reanimation targets I wanted 2 of them to be solid against at least two of these. Hence Inkwell covers Delver/Stoneblade, Akroma was for Stoneblade/Mav and Blazing Archon is there for dredge mostly and non white creature decks (do you really think he's good against mav? I always felt terrified going for him against them).
Then the deck comes down to what is now 3-4 slots of specific hate.
I see the sb starting at
3 target
3 s&t
3 echoing truth
2-3 EE
at that point massacre seems pretty solid since its good against mav/stoneblade and incidentally happens to be good against zoo and combo elves which are reasonably popular decks. Perish happens to be excellent against those same decks save blade but is better than massacre in the decks its good against. Cursed totem is good against Mav especially and has minor overlaps into combo elves less effectively and the forgemaster combo which is probably not terribly relevant.
Considering those options it might actually be more correct to run a split of 2:1 massacre : perish with the last slow being either the 3rd EE or the 3rd thoughtseize in the board.
I'm going to give sheoldred some more consideration, my main concern is that she fairs poorly versus removal as you acknowledged and post board I like to have my threats be as resilient to their removal as possible. This is partially out of respect for all the possible gy hate so when i do get something into play it sticks, and also in order to blank any and all removal they bring in/leave in.
However, sheoldred does seem much better in the dark against non white creature decks which might end up being more of a concern. She also offers advantage against decks like enchantress or any prison style deck that can't directly remove her.
I'll probably post an updated list tonight and hopefully this conversation continues to develop.
(i'm with you on grad work btw to that end, im only going because it marks the start of my spring break)
I see where you're going with this and I have some suggestions. I'm cutting out the deck tags so I can directly comment on choices.
Lands:
2 island
2 swamp
4 polluted delta
2 verdant catacombs
2 scalding tarns
4 underground sea
1 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth ---> Yea I like this
Creatures:
4 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur ----> I understand the logic. I disagree. 3 is already a lot of Jin. I would bring back the Angel. If Angel is lackluster, you can always swap her for Terastadon or the persist dude who kills.
1 Empyrial Archangel
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
Spells:
4 Careful Study
4 Reanimate
4 Entomb
4 Exhume
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder ----> I think 3 is the sweet spot. If you really push for consistency by keeping this 4x, you lose out on other aspects of the deck...namely thoughtseize
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Animate Dead
1 Thoughtseize ---> 1 discard is awful IMO. This would better be served as a miser's Show and Tell if you're 100% happy with the rest of the deck (ie; 4 ponders, etc). The upside of the 1x SnT > the 1x TS.
Sideboard:
3 Show and Tell
2 thoughtseize
2 echoing truth ---> I think 3 bounce is key. 2 is my arbitrary "too low". You DO have a ton of manipulation to dig for these, but with so much redundancy in the format, why not have 3?
2 cursed totem ---> interesting call. my only reservation about totem is that I find it to be awkward. KOTR still punches my face and maverick still eats me when I drop this. Personally, I would use these slots as the 3rd EE and 3rd bounce. If it's working for you, I will not rain on your happy karma.
2 engineered explosives ---> Hopefully this pays dividends.
1 blazing archon
1 inkwell leviathan
1 akroma, angel of fury ---> still not sold on her. I'd much rather go Iona #2 or something like Sheoldred/Titan
1 angel of despair ---> I think not playing this in the main is a mistake.
I can follow this. If this is the case, you think Inkwell AND Akroma-R are necessary? That's a bit of overkill.
This is where things fall apart. She's still vulnerable against Karakas and IMO doesn't halt the opponent eating your face. I guess there's a problem with every option against Maverick. I think Iona is the better call. I'd prefer to double Iona in the Mav AND SFM matchups because I turn off a color (bigger upside IMO), have a bigger flyer (7/7 is a very fast clock), and fall to the same Karakas shenanigans.
Glad to see you roll with this. Remember EE can be played for 2 which sounds like a waste of time, but this can save you on many levels.
If you're concerned about Mav and SFM, you also can include Massacre.
@Eli Kassis with Grave Titan:
Eli's my friend. I liked that tech but you need the right meta to make it effective
First and foremost, thank you for the detailed and well thought out responses, I find discussion like extremely helpful.
I could probably be swayed to cut the Jin's back to 3 and run angel of despair or possibly red akroma main in place of the 4th but I'd like to hear some argument as to why we shouldn't just go max in on Jin for game 1. I do tend to side out a copy or two of him in many game 2s but I'm interested in your reasoning on game 1 having 3.
Why do you consider 3 the sweet spot for ponder? In some ways I can understand your reasoning as in test there are some awkward brainstorm/ponder moments when I just hit more of the same types so from a statistical perspective I think you might be right (and part of me has been considering preordain over ponder at times for this reason)
If I go down to 3 ponders would you consider a maindeck show and tell more important than main deck discard? or do you feel the discard is most important? In practice I found the discard to be only very narrowly useful in a time when snapcaster mage is around. Again I can definitely be swayed on this topic I just found the discard a little lacking but it's possible it's better game 1 than it is post board and might be worth having more of game 1. On the flip side show and tell main is interesting.
I agree that 2 bounce seems too low and I would like to take it to 3-4. On the topic of cursed totem, i've only just started working with them. You are correct that night can still beat you down but stopping them from using his ability to self pump, let alone to fetch karakas/bog is pretty strong. The fact that it also shuts down pridemage protecting itself form their GSZ artifact hate as well as protecting our animate deads (I do still tend to side out a number of those in this match up though) is really nice all in one card investment. It's not as useful against SFM decks but pithing needle felt pretty terrible there as well.
As far as red akroma, i do like her + inkwell versus stoneblade. That match-up feels so bad post board that I wanted to boost it as much as possible. Particularly I wanted to boost the non entomb hands as much as possible. Having two very strong threats against them for show and tell hands or careful study hands gives the match some percentage points of advantage that is useful.
On her application in Maverick I can see what you're saying about Iona and I actually agree that Iona is a better target if I have the option, Alroma is still a decent target though against them and its ability to fight with KotR is definitely important considering how quickly that deck can put us in a position where we have to block and wait on a second big threat.
I've noticed you advocate for sheoldred pretty strongly, I've had a lot of reservations about her in general because of her lack of protection and the whole "needs to survive a turn" problem. On the flip side I can see where she'd be basically a game over if she does survive to constantly reanimate our other threats. Can you supply some additional data/experience with her as a target?
Massacre actually sounds insane against both stoneblade and mav, I very much want to find a place in the board for 1-2 copies now but not quite sure where to put it.
@Meditron
What's your reasoning for Urborg? There's really no spell we have that warrants us playing it right now. In the past, Eli Kasis played it because he had Grave Titan in the board, but no one has done that in quite some time. I would rather have an extra fetch in that slot.
Other than that, everything else looks alright. You might have a tough time against heavy control decks like Stoneblade and BUG variants since you lack additional disruption in your board and they will for sure be bringing in more counters/discard/creature removal on top of what they already have.
the reasoning for urborg was that we actually lose a lot of life in reanimation and the ability to play a fetch land and use it as a swamp occasionally was really nice to avoid additional life loss and to play around wasteland a little. You could be right though and it might not be needed anymore, it was a lot better when I had sundering titan in the list to synergize with and it might just be better as another swamp.
I was running dispels in the board and alternatively spell pierces for awhile but I didn't like the idea of having to wait until i could reanimate with extra mana open (particularly if I had exhume or god forbid show and tell). All it seemed good for was countering their counter spells, which I guess is valuable but it seemed to really slow us down which game stone blade enough time to resolve a stone forge + batterskull and basically kill me. I find RUG isn't really a huge problem though, stoneblade is a really difficult postboard match though I think. Do you think the counters are necessary? and if so where would you place them?
Alright, after a bunch of testing I'm on this deck right now for the GP, still open to making changes this week in the last run of testing and gauntlet running though.
I'm running max on ponders because I wanted the digging power to be maximized during game 1, they also make finding sideboard answers a lot easier game 2 although they can be sided out in some number.
The 4 Jin's is largely because he is the best target in the deck in the dark, if I'm going to have to start with one of them in my hand I'd rather be 50% on him to hit.
I moved Angel of Despair to the board because I found it a little too minimum impact game 1, it's easy to bring in game 2 against decks where she has a strong target. I generally consider Karakas, Jace, and Batterskull to be the strong targets.
There are no Pithing Needles because I really think that card is just a bad answer to problems, drawing them almost always sucks and the number of answers opponents have are way too diverse. Instead I opted to test out the cursed totems which seem insane.
The idea is that cursed totem locks out creatures like KotR, pridemage, Scavenging Ooze, etc. making your echoing truths and angel of despair much more effective at answering the cards that aren't covered. This greatly improves the maverick post board match-up, as well as helping against bant and forgemaster combo.
Akroma is sideboard against both maverick and stoneblade. Against stoneblade it should be able to push through a win better than the other threats. It doesn't need to be protected against them, can profitably block a batterskull if need be, kills jace, can't be plowed and presents a 3-4 turn clock depending on fetch land action. Against Maverick it's open to Karakas but is good against all of their main threats, including chumping Knight. It's possible that Akroma might just be better than Empyrial Archangel with the exception of decks like Goblins and Zoo (and burn incidentally).
Engineered explosized exists to help the delver matchup where all the threats are 1 cmc or 0 (flipped delver) as well as being a good answer to tormods crypt and a stall against dredge.
I think the rest of the choices are understandable and fairly ordinary outside of that.
So with the explanation and deck list out of the way, I really would love some feedback from others who have experience with this deck on how you feel about my specific changes, specific changes you would make, and also on the correct mb - sb composition of the reanimation targets.
I'm hoping this can be a positive discussion leading up to this weekends GP where I'm playing this deck for sure.
I was using sundering titan for awhile, but against RUG Sphinx is actually an instant win where titan is just sort of cute and against Bant/Punishing Mav decks that might run 3-4 colors he's too fragile to their removal. In the end he just wasn't worth it to me so I changed his slot.
I think this splash dual is throwing people off. If you go with EE, you can literally run just an off-color dual. I'm NOT advocating for a 3rd color splash. Totally different idea
EDIT:
@Meditron
I constantly think about Red Akroma but turn her down because she lacks vigilance. If I can't somehow punch them in the face, while defending myself, idk...it's a bit useless.
I'm still not sure about the extra dual it makes me feel uneasy having the potential for it to mess with an otherwise keepable hand when so many hands only have 1-2 lands max.
As for akroma, I have the same feeling, I keep kicking her around if she had some other ability than fire breathing I'd be sold on it. However I like her for the fact that she can stall very effectively too. Empyrial archangel gets murdered a lot of times by stoneblade and maverick just having things like batterskull and manlands or kotr and friends, Akroma can at least profitably block everything without much danger, the pro white is majorly relevant I think just for that reason.
The totem idea is actually really really tempting, it deals with all of the creature based threats from maverick and is immune to pridemage at the same time. Maybe a split between it and Null Rod? depending on the match up either could be much better than pithing needle.
Any other ideas for sideboard tech that can replace pithing needle as well potential reanimation targets that might be better in this metagame? I feel like the stock deck list from a couple months ago just needs some revisions to catch up to the present state of things.
I think the 1x for massacre is fine because of what it does, its like the 3rd perish in a lot of situations but is slightly different has some different utility, it's the same idea as running 3 bounce split 2:1 or discard or any other split like that. Against decks like Mav you side in all 3, the perishes are better but the Massacre serves a unique purpose, over all you'd rather have the perish but the massacre is a non 0 increase in percentage for the situations in that match up where you really need it, like against their occasional thalia draw.
Additionally it's a flexible card against a deck like Death and Taxes or variable white weenie builds where perish is useless. Obviously you don't want to dedicate a ton of hate to decks like that, but they invariably show up and it isn't damaging my green deck match up by making the split. We do run a lot of dig and draw in the deck to boost the probability of finding the 1 of cards. Basically with the perish/massacre split I'm shoring up my aggro matches where all three are good (Mav and zoo mostly) but giving myself just that minor percentage boost against various white decks and the ability to beat the thalia draw which perish is basically dead against (3 mana is hard 4 mana is almost not happening).
its sort of the same idea as splitting echoing truth and wipe away, or in my case chain of vapor and echoing truth. They're all bounce spells and most of the time serve the same purpose, but the added flexibility is not negligible and those minor percentage points that they add to a match up shouldn't be ignored, at least in my opinion.
I understand with mystical tutor being around (i wish) it'd obviously be an easy argument to make, but even without tutor finding ways to have redundancy while also adding a bit of flexibility is really useful in covering diverse match ups with a sideboard that has very little wiggle room.
There are corner cases and some matches where echoing truth is better and I concede to that point and am going with a 2:1 split on them. Wipe Away just seems like it's too slow right now and as an answer to Karakas seems fairly poor if you aren't about to win exactly that turn.
As of now I think a 2:1 split for the bounce spells makes a lot of sense for control matches.
I'm also leaning strongly to a 2:1 split between perish and massacre. Right now leaning to 2 perish for it's wider utility against decks like combo elves and enchantress in general, but massacre is an excellent anti thalia card as mentioned above, beats scavanging ooze if they drop him before having a way to pump him, and is a good catchall against white weenie style decks. This logic leads me to believe perish is the more important one, but it's very narrow choice between how to make the split. I definitely feel they should both be there right now going into the GP however.
I understand your argument, however the situations where bouncing multiple copies of the same card is important seem really seldom. Typically I find myself using it to bounce graveyard hate (which often just gets cracked in response). In those cases it's incredibly important that my bounce spell does not get countered, at 1 mana that means it's easier to pay for spell pierce/daze and it dodges spell snare. I tried wipe away as well, and I do like the safety of split second, but cards that cost 3 mana are risky propositions as is.
Also if we're running E.E. that goes miles to handle goblin tokens/zombie tokens in large numbers as well, I could see maybe doing some kind of a split between echoing truth and chain, but chain's flexibility at 1 mana has been a big difference.
The only draw back situation is when I need to bounce something to push the last bit of damage, at which point echoing truth is better for the "sac a land" reason you cited. So perhaps splitting 2:1 alone chain and truth or even chain and wipe away might be good for when those situations arise.
I'm taking it and I'll be there friday afternoon if you want to do any kind of comparing of notes I'll obviously be on site saturday. It's probably useful to compare notes here too though with scrutiny from others.
The issue is that if you're bouncing something you probably really need to bounce it and having it immune to at least one potential counter spell is nice. Also it costs 1 mana which is entirely relevant when you're bouncing a guy so you can then entomb + reanimate or other such combinations.
Just tossing this out for everyone to consider.
2 island
2 swamp
2 verdant catacombs
2 scalding tarn
4 polluted delta
4 underground sea
1 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
Creatures:
3 jin-gitaxias, core augur
1 empyrial archangel
1 iona, shield of emeria
1 angel of despair
1 elesh norn, grand cenobite
1 Sphinx of the steel wind
4 brainstorms
4 force of will
3 daze
3 ponder
4 careful study
4 entomb
4 reanimate
4 exhume
3 animate dead
2 thoughtseize
1 thoughtseize
3 show and tell
2 perish
1 massacre
2 engineered explosives
3 echoing truth
1 blazing archon
1 inkwell leviathan
1 akroma, angel of wrath
This seems to run really well main board and feels at least presently optimal.
The board is working out a lot better, although I find there are some awkward sideboard decisions right now, I feel like it might be worthwhile if we can get a discussion started about possible sideboard decisions to be made for match-ups. Not a strict guideline per-say since I'm very against being overly specific, but something to chew on because I feel like I'm being slightly suboptimal about my boarding decisions.
My testing today showed what a distinctly awful matchup hard control really is. I played against a landstill deck packing innocent blood and it was an absolute nightmare, all of the cards were basically the worst thing possible and i was never even close to ahead.
Question for consideration: How fast are you willing to go for the combo? Do you do it the minute you have it regardless of protection or do you tend to wait for protection longer? Obviously if you have protection it makes sense to shoot. This is mostly only applicable to the control (blue decks) matchups, but I never like waiting a long time personally and usually go for the combo rather aggressively since I feel like the longer we wait against a good control player the worse our chances of pulling it off become. Never the less I'm tossing this one out into the aether for everyone.
So basically: when do you go for it? what are your sideboard considerations? let's see if we can find a consensus
Yeah i ended up putting totem (which is what I assume you meant?) aside for the moment in favor of perish/massacre split im testing right now. So far they seem much better, notably they're good even after we reanimate something if we get locked into blocking some big threats perish does clear the way.
Right now my split 2:1 favoring perish as massacre is really only better in the early part of the game (and generally trades 1 for 1 straight up but sometimes gets a dryad arbor for value).
Apparently you weren't following the previous pages discussion, the fact that you just listed so many targets is exactly the reason you don't want to run them anymore. Notice in particularly that KotR, Karakas, Maze, Pridemage, and Ooze are all in the same deck. Pithing needle is exactly junk against Maverick as a deck. On that note notice that Jace and stoneforge + batterskull and sometimes karakas and crypt as well are in Stoneblade.
The exact problem with needle is that it is too narrow of an answer, on top of that it's negative card advantage since you waste an entire card on locking down one possible answer. Needle was fantastic when we only had to worry about if they had Crypt or Relic, even if you had to worry about Karakas too having only 2-3 targets made pithing needle much more potent.
Now you can have a needle in your opener and maverick plays turn 2 ooze against you, you needle it, and they play KotR. So unless you had a great nut draw with pithing needle, entomb, and reainamte for a non legend shroud guy, you're dead. However if in this circumstance you had Perish for instance, you can wait for them to play out the KotR, kill them both and be very safe. Or if you went the Cursed Totem route (which I think i'm now abandoning but still think is viable) you play that and you locked everything out except for Karakas.
The point is you want an answer that is widely effective. Echoing truth/bounce spells are solid answers for Crypt/Spellbomb and you have show and tell to get around those as well. You can also use the Exhume trick to bait them and win around them.
The real threat to us is not the narrow gy hate, we aren't dredge, the problem for us is how super efficient cheap creatures like KotR and Stoneforge Mystic are. it turns out we have a super difficult time beating a resolved batterskull through counter magic. Also it turns out KotR can tutor up Karakas and bog and also can get bigger than most of our big guys.
The problem is that we need to out class super efficient creatures, pithing needle does not do that and in fact leaves KotR around to continue to beat down. Remember our best reanimation spell Reanimate, causes a loss of life, that's particularly problematic against KotR decks.
Pithing Needle is a relic of the past as far as this deck is concerned, it's sticking around because at one point it was a fine answer and it's just being auto included in the board because "everyone else has it so why not me?"
Realistically Legacy as a format is a lot different than it was even a year ago and if we don't question things that used to seem inalienable we're going to fall behind. There is a reason reanimator has been unpopular lately, that reason is because the angles that attack us are really diverse and we still choose to run super narrow answers to diverse attacks. The solution we're advocating here is to run more broad answers in order to improve the quality of our direct answers.
by running a card like Massacre, or totem, or perish what you in effect do is make you echoing truths and angel of despairs better answers. You can depend more readily on those cards to answer the creatures while angel and friends can clean up karakas, or jace, or whatever remaining threat they don't cover. This ends up maximizing your sideboard against a greater number of potential matches where pithing needle was essentially doing nothing.
I actually entirely disagree on this point. Faery macabre is definitely not enough reason to pack needle. Additionally it's actually a problem for Burn when they have to side a bunch of non burn spells in. Realistically every time they draw a faerie that's ~3 less damage we're taking which definitely buys us time. Also it does nothing against show and tell if you were inclined to bring that in (and I think I would).
The same goes for any pyroblasts they might bring in, everything non burn they bring in is diluting their burn plan and favoring us as long as we play smart. I really consider Burn one of the easiest over all matches honestly.
Your explanation of why to go to 3 Jin's is incredibly compelling, I'll shift back to 1 angel of despair main for the reasons discussed. I also agree that 8 is the correct number of targets. When running a 60 card deck it puts us on something like that a 15% chance to draw any target if none were in the opening hand, with an extremely high percentage to have 1 in the opening hand in some combination. Going to 9 doesn't meaningfully increase this statistic but going to 7 reduces our options to significantly so the math from a stat/comb perspective seems to corroborate this.
The ponder discussion likewise confirms my earlier data point of brainstorming/pondering into too many of the same spells. I do want to do some testing with preordain as well. One of my main problems with ponder was always the situations where I kept the 3 because i really needed that reanimation spell even though I wanted to dump the next 2 brainstorms coming up. Preordain at least lets me dump garbage. I also like the fact that preordain sends the cards away to the bottom so even though I'm seeing 1 less card on average I know that when I blind draw my odds of seeing something i just sent away are very much reduced.
I find your thoughtseize argument pretty compelling as well. I feel like main deck show and tell would require a reinventing of the core deck list that I just realistically do not have time for with only a week left running up to the GP. It is an interesting idea that might bear some exploration as the present decks that run Show and Tell main are doing so without making any real adjustments to what it means for the deck. So I think 2 discard might be just fine main deck with another 1 in the board, again 3 feels optimal in this case.
For the next couple arguments I guess it's important to frame the meta-game discussion. I'm prepping this for the GP as previously stated, as such I'm expecting RUG Delver, Stone Blade, and Maverick to be the most popular decks in roughly that order. Beyond that I expect the typical tier 1 to be present but not in enough that I can even bank on playing against each 1 time in a typical day 1. I feel like the popularity and relative ease of access to those 3 decks should ensure I play each of them at least once if not the potential for playing 1-2 of them twice.
As a result of that estimation I want to make sure that I'm well positioned against those decks to some degree. The Delver matchup already feels very positive from my perspective I'm not sure what your thoughts are but I found that preboard it was massively in my favor and post board their threat density is still low enough that even though I have to fight through more permission (sometimes counterop packages) I at least had cards like EE and echoing truth to fight back and it still felt like a positive match-up.
Maverick in testing it depended on the deck. I played against a variant that went very all in on Oozes and that was a nightmare match-up, however the more traditional builds and the punishing fire variant were all just about auto wins game 1 with more of struggle game 2 based on their sideboard composition.
The stoneblade match up is miserable in general as you indicated and is actually my number 1 point of concern for improvement here. Even game 1 still feels like it's 50-50 at best with the post board games feeling close to unwinnable without substantial luck.
With those meta points in mind, Engineered Explosives, Echoing Truth, and Show and Tell seemed like the top priority sideboard cards since they have the widest application in all of the major matchups I expect.
As for the reanimation targets I wanted 2 of them to be solid against at least two of these. Hence Inkwell covers Delver/Stoneblade, Akroma was for Stoneblade/Mav and Blazing Archon is there for dredge mostly and non white creature decks (do you really think he's good against mav? I always felt terrified going for him against them).
Then the deck comes down to what is now 3-4 slots of specific hate.
I see the sb starting at
3 target
3 s&t
3 echoing truth
2-3 EE
at that point massacre seems pretty solid since its good against mav/stoneblade and incidentally happens to be good against zoo and combo elves which are reasonably popular decks. Perish happens to be excellent against those same decks save blade but is better than massacre in the decks its good against. Cursed totem is good against Mav especially and has minor overlaps into combo elves less effectively and the forgemaster combo which is probably not terribly relevant.
Considering those options it might actually be more correct to run a split of 2:1 massacre : perish with the last slow being either the 3rd EE or the 3rd thoughtseize in the board.
I'm going to give sheoldred some more consideration, my main concern is that she fairs poorly versus removal as you acknowledged and post board I like to have my threats be as resilient to their removal as possible. This is partially out of respect for all the possible gy hate so when i do get something into play it sticks, and also in order to blank any and all removal they bring in/leave in.
However, sheoldred does seem much better in the dark against non white creature decks which might end up being more of a concern. She also offers advantage against decks like enchantress or any prison style deck that can't directly remove her.
I'll probably post an updated list tonight and hopefully this conversation continues to develop.
(i'm with you on grad work btw to that end, im only going because it marks the start of my spring break)
First and foremost, thank you for the detailed and well thought out responses, I find discussion like extremely helpful.
I could probably be swayed to cut the Jin's back to 3 and run angel of despair or possibly red akroma main in place of the 4th but I'd like to hear some argument as to why we shouldn't just go max in on Jin for game 1. I do tend to side out a copy or two of him in many game 2s but I'm interested in your reasoning on game 1 having 3.
Why do you consider 3 the sweet spot for ponder? In some ways I can understand your reasoning as in test there are some awkward brainstorm/ponder moments when I just hit more of the same types so from a statistical perspective I think you might be right (and part of me has been considering preordain over ponder at times for this reason)
If I go down to 3 ponders would you consider a maindeck show and tell more important than main deck discard? or do you feel the discard is most important? In practice I found the discard to be only very narrowly useful in a time when snapcaster mage is around. Again I can definitely be swayed on this topic I just found the discard a little lacking but it's possible it's better game 1 than it is post board and might be worth having more of game 1. On the flip side show and tell main is interesting.
I agree that 2 bounce seems too low and I would like to take it to 3-4. On the topic of cursed totem, i've only just started working with them. You are correct that night can still beat you down but stopping them from using his ability to self pump, let alone to fetch karakas/bog is pretty strong. The fact that it also shuts down pridemage protecting itself form their GSZ artifact hate as well as protecting our animate deads (I do still tend to side out a number of those in this match up though) is really nice all in one card investment. It's not as useful against SFM decks but pithing needle felt pretty terrible there as well.
As far as red akroma, i do like her + inkwell versus stoneblade. That match-up feels so bad post board that I wanted to boost it as much as possible. Particularly I wanted to boost the non entomb hands as much as possible. Having two very strong threats against them for show and tell hands or careful study hands gives the match some percentage points of advantage that is useful.
On her application in Maverick I can see what you're saying about Iona and I actually agree that Iona is a better target if I have the option, Alroma is still a decent target though against them and its ability to fight with KotR is definitely important considering how quickly that deck can put us in a position where we have to block and wait on a second big threat.
I've noticed you advocate for sheoldred pretty strongly, I've had a lot of reservations about her in general because of her lack of protection and the whole "needs to survive a turn" problem. On the flip side I can see where she'd be basically a game over if she does survive to constantly reanimate our other threats. Can you supply some additional data/experience with her as a target?
Massacre actually sounds insane against both stoneblade and mav, I very much want to find a place in the board for 1-2 copies now but not quite sure where to put it.
the reasoning for urborg was that we actually lose a lot of life in reanimation and the ability to play a fetch land and use it as a swamp occasionally was really nice to avoid additional life loss and to play around wasteland a little. You could be right though and it might not be needed anymore, it was a lot better when I had sundering titan in the list to synergize with and it might just be better as another swamp.
I was running dispels in the board and alternatively spell pierces for awhile but I didn't like the idea of having to wait until i could reanimate with extra mana open (particularly if I had exhume or god forbid show and tell). All it seemed good for was countering their counter spells, which I guess is valuable but it seemed to really slow us down which game stone blade enough time to resolve a stone forge + batterskull and basically kill me. I find RUG isn't really a huge problem though, stoneblade is a really difficult postboard match though I think. Do you think the counters are necessary? and if so where would you place them?
2 island
2 swamp
4 polluted delta
2 verdant catacombs
2 scalding tarns
4 underground sea
1 urborg, tomb of yawgmoth
Creatures:
4 Jin-Gitaxias, Core Augur
1 Empyrial Archangel
1 Sphinx of the Steel Wind
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
4 Careful Study
4 Reanimate
4 Entomb
4 Exhume
4 Brainstorm
4 Ponder
4 Force of Will
3 Daze
3 Animate Dead
1 Thoughtseize
3 Show and Tell
2 thoughtseize
2 echoing truth
2 cursed totem
2 engineered explosives
1 blazing archon
1 inkwell leviathan
1 akroma, angel of fury
1 angel of despair
About some choices:
I'm running max on ponders because I wanted the digging power to be maximized during game 1, they also make finding sideboard answers a lot easier game 2 although they can be sided out in some number.
The 4 Jin's is largely because he is the best target in the deck in the dark, if I'm going to have to start with one of them in my hand I'd rather be 50% on him to hit.
I moved Angel of Despair to the board because I found it a little too minimum impact game 1, it's easy to bring in game 2 against decks where she has a strong target. I generally consider Karakas, Jace, and Batterskull to be the strong targets.
There are no Pithing Needles because I really think that card is just a bad answer to problems, drawing them almost always sucks and the number of answers opponents have are way too diverse. Instead I opted to test out the cursed totems which seem insane.
The idea is that cursed totem locks out creatures like KotR, pridemage, Scavenging Ooze, etc. making your echoing truths and angel of despair much more effective at answering the cards that aren't covered. This greatly improves the maverick post board match-up, as well as helping against bant and forgemaster combo.
Akroma is sideboard against both maverick and stoneblade. Against stoneblade it should be able to push through a win better than the other threats. It doesn't need to be protected against them, can profitably block a batterskull if need be, kills jace, can't be plowed and presents a 3-4 turn clock depending on fetch land action. Against Maverick it's open to Karakas but is good against all of their main threats, including chumping Knight. It's possible that Akroma might just be better than Empyrial Archangel with the exception of decks like Goblins and Zoo (and burn incidentally).
Engineered explosized exists to help the delver matchup where all the threats are 1 cmc or 0 (flipped delver) as well as being a good answer to tormods crypt and a stall against dredge.
I think the rest of the choices are understandable and fairly ordinary outside of that.
So with the explanation and deck list out of the way, I really would love some feedback from others who have experience with this deck on how you feel about my specific changes, specific changes you would make, and also on the correct mb - sb composition of the reanimation targets.
I'm hoping this can be a positive discussion leading up to this weekends GP where I'm playing this deck for sure.
I was using sundering titan for awhile, but against RUG Sphinx is actually an instant win where titan is just sort of cute and against Bant/Punishing Mav decks that might run 3-4 colors he's too fragile to their removal. In the end he just wasn't worth it to me so I changed his slot.
I'm still not sure about the extra dual it makes me feel uneasy having the potential for it to mess with an otherwise keepable hand when so many hands only have 1-2 lands max.
As for akroma, I have the same feeling, I keep kicking her around if she had some other ability than fire breathing I'd be sold on it. However I like her for the fact that she can stall very effectively too. Empyrial archangel gets murdered a lot of times by stoneblade and maverick just having things like batterskull and manlands or kotr and friends, Akroma can at least profitably block everything without much danger, the pro white is majorly relevant I think just for that reason.
The totem idea is actually really really tempting, it deals with all of the creature based threats from maverick and is immune to pridemage at the same time. Maybe a split between it and Null Rod? depending on the match up either could be much better than pithing needle.
Any other ideas for sideboard tech that can replace pithing needle as well potential reanimation targets that might be better in this metagame? I feel like the stock deck list from a couple months ago just needs some revisions to catch up to the present state of things.