It's exiled, as per the replacement effect of flashback.
Also, to everyone playing Thoughseizes in the board: Might Duress be a substitute? It seems better against burn and still has relevance VS Tron and other control lists, whose most dangerous threats are non-creatures anyway. It's also information plus a card without worrying about your life total VS Bolt decks.
On the topic of sideboarding, I've noticed myself siding out Cryptic Commands for a variety of matchups. I try to keep them in for BGx/Mardu matchups to leverage our superior incremental advantage, but VS quick decks as well as any Ux control lists I'm shaving or completely removing them. They're very expensive as far as counter magic goes, which opens me up to just being dead in the water for the first three turns against aggressive decks and tapping way too low against blue decks. For this reason I'm thinking of going down to 3. Just wanted to make sure I'm not completely off base: Does anyone else find themselves liberally siding out Cryptics, or am I crazy? I experimented with bringing in 2 Runed Halos over 2 Cryptics VS Jeskai and I felt very comfortable with just tossing Halos out naming burn spells while holding up permission for Nahiri and removal for Colonnades.
I'm very drawn to the idea of Secure the Wastes as an early game play, and its synergy with the 4 Snaps seems alluring. WSZ seems to only have late value. I'm also seeing all these recent Wafo-Tapa builds with 2 Secure and thinking there must be a reason for it.
I think you can cut a Sphinx's Revelation. There's only so much time and deck space you can dedicate to cards that don't affect the board early on. 4 Esper Charm, 4 Think Twice, 2 Rev, 1 White Sun is a lot of cards that can bog down your early game space if you draw too many of them.
That's about what I figured. Opening on 2 also feels like getting 2 Prized Amalgam in your opening dredge hand: Maybe useful later, but dead weight for the first several turns.
I'm currently on 2 Rev / 2 Verdict, and because of space constraints I feel like I can only run a one-of White Sun's Zenith. I felt very comfortable going down to 2 Verdict because Push-Snap-Push is very good at keeping the board manageable and Spell Snare hits a lot of relevant creatures.
Is there a consensus on Natural State VS Nature's Claim in the sideboard? What jumps out to me is that Claim can hit Leylines and Night of Soul'a Betrayal. But since people are generally dialing back on hate I'd expect to see Leyline of the Void a lot less often, as the more primary forms of hate require way less commitment. Leyline seems to only come around in extreme circumstances where people feel they absolutely *need* 3-6 grave hate slots to begin with – in any other circumstances, Leylines seem to take up too much valuable sideboard space.
I've seen way more of Grafdigger's Cage and Scavenging Ooze, which makes me more keen on Natural State, Lightning Axe and Thoughtseize than Nature's Claim and Collective Brutality.
Edit to avoid a double post: Is Ground Seal just way too cute to see any real sideboard play? I dig how it lets us dredge upon entering, but it seems narrow compared to the rest of our options, and it turns off Loam. Just making sure writing off the card isn't a mistake on my part because I could see it being useful against Jund and Abzan Coco, as they don't have much in the way of good non-targeting hate.
Hey all! I don't quite know where to post this, as it's an all-in Dredge deck with a Vengevine package. Let me know if I need to and I'll take it to the Dredgevine primer.
To the point: I replaced the Narcomoebas as well as the Gargadon/Bridge package in Tom Ross' post-ban list for something that has live dredges no matter what. I'm also rocking the full 4 Cathartic Reunion as well as 2 Darkblasts and 3 Dakmor Salvages, which is more Dredge cards than normal for increased consistency. (I think just increasing the raw volume of dredgers and enablers helps a lot to recover from the Grave Troll ban.)
I almost never cast Life from the Loam. Is it worth it to keep around with Conflagrate, or should I just cut it for land number 20?
I'm finding that Thoughtseize puts in way more work than Collective Brutality, but I haven't played the burn matchup yet. Thoughtseize and Nature's Claim take care of so much hate post-board that Brutality just can't hit. Lightning Axe has also been amazing; having it in combination with Darkblast basically allows me to play Dredge Control VS Affinity, Infect, and mana dork decks. Darkblasting my own Gravecrawlers to recast them for Vengevine triggers also comes up every now and then, as does offing my Bloodghasts to play a land and get Amalgam triggers.
So I want to buy into this deck, as it seems like tons of fun. But I wanted to ask some questions first.
I've goldfished a million times and know the ins and outs of the combo, as well as the tighter, less obvious lines the build allows. However, this deck becomes very difficult to play once I try to fire it up on cockatrice. So my questions are:
What's your standard for a mulligan? I generally keep hands that have Stirrings/Serum Visions plus ways to cast them on turn one, as well as hands with a land, an Amulet, and a karoo land. But this deck has so many wonky pieces that it can just puke out the weirdest hands at you, especially when you consider that your opponent might be on discard. Throw in varied matchups and sideboarding and I have a headache. Could anyone post some "Keep or Mulligan" type things, preferably with the answers hidden?
Sideboarding is also odd. I've run into a ton of discard trashing matches I should have won, so I took the easy way out at put in 4 Leyline of Sanctity.
I've taken out Sakura Tribe-Scout entirely, because it was almost never relevant enough and we have 12 other turn one plays that are all way more powerful. I replaced them with 4 Lotus Cobra, as it's a nice compromise between an extra land oulet, a pseudo-amulet, and an engine that can be pacted for. It often makes the kill a half a turn to a full turn faster since it's functionally a second amulet.
The Wurmcoil Engine, Hornet Queen, Dragonlord Dromoka, and Simic Sky Swallower are there because A) Cobra makes them easier to cast, B) they each give plenty of decks some hard times - Ruric Thar goes in and out of the main - and Wurmcoil can be grabbed off of an Ancient Stirrings. These fatties also give me something threatening to do with my mana when I'm in a situation with plenty of mana but no Titan in hand. As such, I tried to pick threats that are hard to interact with in their own ways.
ad 1) Snappy is just a value card, nothing else tbh. I used him so far twice to win of a natural PiF less Storm combo with Grapeshot, but otherwise he is here to flashback things like Removal, Counters or simple card draw spells/Gifts.
If you do not have one, you can trade it in for any card you want, be it a 7th Mancer effect (in my current list I run 4 Homunculus, 1 Baral, 1 Sanctum), an Increasing Vengeance (makes some absurd piles possible) or an additional cantrip/interaction piece (Izzet Charm comes to mind).
ad 2) No, it isn't (assuming you want to win on your third turn). If you go Ritual into Gifts you have 2 mana floating post Gifts, so you will fizzle as long as the opp doesn't give you Ritual (Morphose doesn't help, since you need 4 mana pre PiF to be able to flashback a Ritual). Hence, you would need two Rituals or Ritual + Morphose to win that turn (or Ritual + Revival + cantrip to redraw the Ritual).
The only thing a Turn 2 Mancer really does is setting up a turn 4 kill with a turn 3 Gifts. However, if you have a Ritual in your hand and a Homunculus on turn 3 into flip on turn 4 wins too (tap, float mana, transform, cast Gifts (1 mana in pool post Gifts), grab Ritual x2 (if you have drawn the Pyretic, go for the Revival), Morphose and PiF (opp gives you Morphose + PiF), play Ritual from hand (3 mana), Morphose (4 Mana), standard line from here on).
Btw, that line is only possible cause of the "ramp" from the Homunculus
ad 3) Nope, you are right. My brewing goal is always, getting done the MD first and than look at the SB, cause otherwise you do not know, where your strengths/weaknesses are. However, I would run another 2 threats in the board (either something along Geist or something like 4 mana Gideon), some counters/removal as always and otherwise some silver bullets for the problematic match-ups (like Pyroclasm, Stony, Rest of the Wary,...).
Greetings,
Kathal
Thanks for the swift reply! (And thanks for pointing out my error on the turn 3 kill. Saves me from trying it IRL and looking like an idiot.)
I think I'll opt for Increasing Vengeance as my Snapcaster replacement for no other reason than how sweet complicated Gifts piles are. I want guitar riffs going off when I kill someone.
I might also want a replacement for Jace's Sanctum because it's such a top-heavy investment, but I also recognize that a 4 mana non-creature, non-planeswalker is almost unkillable in this format. Plus, it turns any topdecked Gifts lethal.
How is our BGx matchup? What decks should I be most worried about seeing?
Hey there! I'm new to this deck. Building the URw version at the moment and had some minor questions.
1) How important is the singleton Snapcaster? What would I be unable to do without him? I recognize Tiago's synergy with the control plan, but I'm wondering about his combo / value Gifts applications.
2) What I like most about the UR storm deck is that a cost reduction on turn 2 and a Ritual + Gifts on turn 3 is a win. Since I like being a deviant and cheating the system, I was wondering if a second Baral (or maybe a Goblin Electromancer because of the name Clause on Gifts) could be my replacement for Snapcaster. Granted, URw runs fewer rituals, but 2 outs to a turn 3 feel better than 1.
3) Lastly, what would you recommend as a sideboard? I don't see many posted here. But maybe I'm not looking hard enough.
I think this is a huge hit to the deck since I don't think that the bannings slow anything but dredge down by that much, but losing Probe makes Pyromancer Ascension significantly slower in the matchups where we have no choice but to race. I will be testing -4 Probe +3 Noxious Revival +1 Faithless Looing this weekend. Hopefully it will still be ok. I really love the deck and I'll still play it some if it isn't as powerful as before, but I felt it was on the brink of being really good before and this brings it back a notch.
A turn one looting makes active Ascensions more feasible on turn 3, and Noxious Revival being free is a huge help. You can also pull some cantrip shenanigans with Revivals: With cantrip A in the yard, cast cantrip B. Ascension triggers. In response, cast Revival targeting cantrip A, which you then draw off of cantrip B and cast for the second Ascension counter. Revival's also nifty for fixing your Reveler draws, as it clears up your hand and buys back your best spells.
Looting is probably just a necessity now. At least beefing up on them beefs up our graveyard, which helps Ancestral Visions.
Turn 3 kills won't really be feasible anymore, though.
To extrapolate, the reason I don't think Surgical will replace Git Probe is that most decks have several more on-plan cards to replace it. Infect has Slip Through Space, Distortion Strike, and Blossoming Defense, which will likely just increase in numbers. Death's shadow might run more burn or a different pump spell, but phyrexian mana on SE makes this one a little more likely to show up in some numbers. Delver strategies will just play more generically good stuff or delirium enablers in place of probe.
Why don't we think about what we could be doing instead of abandoning the deck? We have playable outs, and a slower format is probably quite good for us. Plus, the Troll's banning is fantastic for our game plan because it means we can expect way less grave hate. (I highly doubt that people will commit to four maindeck surgical extractions in those hyper-aggressive decks, mostly because SE doesn't replace itself.)
Realistically, this means we play 4 Faithless Looting and 4 Sleight of Hand.
That is a fair point on Looting, actually. Another consideration is that it allows you to keep hands with a red source, but not a blue source, which become auto-mulligans when you don't run Looting. With these points considered I'd feel better about running it in UWR builds since mulligans can be disastrous if we whiff on a blue source in the second hand.
I agree that Visions can often be win-more, but I think we need to take what we can get as far as advantages over BGx. Really, I'm not too worried about our other matchups, as they don't have nearly the same history of oppressing this archetype in its various forms. Even Burn has some silver bullets against it that swing the match.
I never have a problem going off without Looting, and the entire point of including TiTi and Reveler in the deck is that you don't have to go off to win. If Ascension is the deck's only win condition, then yes, it makes sense to include Looting, but that's not the case. For me, Reveler and Commune with the Gods fill the graveyard up much more proactively, and Commune finds threats much more consistently.
You didn't address the points I brought up about Remand? I went through the most relevant answers to our engines in the format and elaborated on why Remand isn't particularly good at answering any of them, as well as why Remand is subpar at disrupting an opponent (especially when our combo kill isn't as clean as Scapeshift and our game plan doesn't have as many outs as Blue Moon, USA, or the old Twin lists, which made the best use of Remand in the format's history.) Furthermore, using Remand to respond to 2 mana counters is sketchy unless you already have an Ascension on the board from a previous turn – holding up Remand + a threat means you're waiting until turn 4 to get the ball rolling.
Also, to everyone playing Thoughseizes in the board: Might Duress be a substitute? It seems better against burn and still has relevance VS Tron and other control lists, whose most dangerous threats are non-creatures anyway. It's also information plus a card without worrying about your life total VS Bolt decks.
That's about what I figured. Opening on 2 also feels like getting 2 Prized Amalgam in your opening dredge hand: Maybe useful later, but dead weight for the first several turns.
Esper Control.dec, Built with Decked Builder
http://decks.deckedbuilder.com/d/272527
4 Snapcaster Mage
Spells:30
4 Fatal Push
2 Path to Exile
2 Spell Snare
3 Logic Knot
2 Negate
4 Think Twice
4 Esper Charm
2 Sphinx's Revelation
1 White Sun's Zenith
4 Cryptic Command
2 Supreme Verdict
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
1 Godless Shrine
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Island
1 Marsh Flats
1 Mystic Gate
1 Plains
4 Polluted Delta
1 Steam Vents
1 Sunken Ruins
1 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
1 Dispel
2 Path to Exile
2 Thoughtseize
2 Celestial Purge
2 Runed Halo
2 Stony Silence
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Crumble to Dust
I'm currently on 2 Rev / 2 Verdict, and because of space constraints I feel like I can only run a one-of White Sun's Zenith. I felt very comfortable going down to 2 Verdict because Push-Snap-Push is very good at keeping the board manageable and Spell Snare hits a lot of relevant creatures.
Edit: I also think one Gideon, Ally of Zendikar might be worth a shot. Yay? Nay?
I've seen way more of Grafdigger's Cage and Scavenging Ooze, which makes me more keen on Natural State, Lightning Axe and Thoughtseize than Nature's Claim and Collective Brutality.
Edit to avoid a double post: Is Ground Seal just way too cute to see any real sideboard play? I dig how it lets us dredge upon entering, but it seems narrow compared to the rest of our options, and it turns off Loam. Just making sure writing off the card isn't a mistake on my part because I could see it being useful against Jund and Abzan Coco, as they don't have much in the way of good non-targeting hate.
To the point: I replaced the Narcomoebas as well as the Gargadon/Bridge package in Tom Ross' post-ban list for something that has live dredges no matter what. I'm also rocking the full 4 Cathartic Reunion as well as 2 Darkblasts and 3 Dakmor Salvages, which is more Dredge cards than normal for increased consistency. (I think just increasing the raw volume of dredgers and enablers helps a lot to recover from the Grave Troll ban.)
I almost never cast Life from the Loam. Is it worth it to keep around with Conflagrate, or should I just cut it for land number 20?
I'm finding that Thoughtseize puts in way more work than Collective Brutality, but I haven't played the burn matchup yet. Thoughtseize and Nature's Claim take care of so much hate post-board that Brutality just can't hit. Lightning Axe has also been amazing; having it in combination with Darkblast basically allows me to play Dredge Control VS Affinity, Infect, and mana dork decks. Darkblasting my own Gravecrawlers to recast them for Vengevine triggers also comes up every now and then, as does offing my Bloodghasts to play a land and get Amalgam triggers.
4 Bloodghast
4 Golgari Thug
4 Gravecrawler
1 Haunted Dead
4 Insolent Neonate
4 Prized Amalgam
4 Stinkweed Imp
4 Vengevine
Instants & Sorceries
2 Darkblast
4 Cathartic Reunion
4 Faithless Looting
1 Conflagrate
1 Life from the Loam
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Blood Crypt
2 Bloodstained Mire
3 Dakmor Salvage
1 Mana Confluence
1 Mountain
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
4 Wooded Foothills
2 Gnaw to the Bone
3 Lightning Axe
3 Nature's Claim
1 Ancient Grudge
2 Collective Brutality
1 Conflagrate
3 Thoughtseize
I've goldfished a million times and know the ins and outs of the combo, as well as the tighter, less obvious lines the build allows. However, this deck becomes very difficult to play once I try to fire it up on cockatrice. So my questions are:
What's your standard for a mulligan? I generally keep hands that have Stirrings/Serum Visions plus ways to cast them on turn one, as well as hands with a land, an Amulet, and a karoo land. But this deck has so many wonky pieces that it can just puke out the weirdest hands at you, especially when you consider that your opponent might be on discard. Throw in varied matchups and sideboarding and I have a headache. Could anyone post some "Keep or Mulligan" type things, preferably with the answers hidden?
Sideboarding is also odd. I've run into a ton of discard trashing matches I should have won, so I took the easy way out at put in 4 Leyline of Sanctity.
My list is as follows:
4 Amulet of Vigor
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Azusa, Lost but Seeking
4 Primeval Titan
1 Simic Sky Swallower
1 Hornet Queen
1 Wurmcoil Engine
1 Dragonlord Dromoka
4 Summoner's Pact
1 Boros Garrison
1 Cavern of Souls
1 Crumbling Vestige
2 Forest
4 Gemstone Mine
1 Ghost Quarter
3 Gruul Turf
1 Khalni Garden
1 Radiant Fountain
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
4 Simic Growth Chamber
1 Slayers' Stronghold
1 Sunhome, Fortress of the Legion
1 Teetering Peaks
3 Tolaria West
1 Vesuva
4 Serum Visions
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Ruric Thar, the Unbowed
1 Melira, Sylvok Outcast
1 Spellskite
1 Seal of Primordium
4 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Swan Song
1 Ancient Grudge
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Crumble to Dust
1 Pyroclasm
I've taken out Sakura Tribe-Scout entirely, because it was almost never relevant enough and we have 12 other turn one plays that are all way more powerful. I replaced them with 4 Lotus Cobra, as it's a nice compromise between an extra land oulet, a pseudo-amulet, and an engine that can be pacted for. It often makes the kill a half a turn to a full turn faster since it's functionally a second amulet.
The Wurmcoil Engine, Hornet Queen, Dragonlord Dromoka, and Simic Sky Swallower are there because A) Cobra makes them easier to cast, B) they each give plenty of decks some hard times - Ruric Thar goes in and out of the main - and Wurmcoil can be grabbed off of an Ancient Stirrings. These fatties also give me something threatening to do with my mana when I'm in a situation with plenty of mana but no Titan in hand. As such, I tried to pick threats that are hard to interact with in their own ways.
Thanks for the swift reply! (And thanks for pointing out my error on the turn 3 kill. Saves me from trying it IRL and looking like an idiot.)
I think I'll opt for Increasing Vengeance as my Snapcaster replacement for no other reason than how sweet complicated Gifts piles are. I want guitar riffs going off when I kill someone.
I might also want a replacement for Jace's Sanctum because it's such a top-heavy investment, but I also recognize that a 4 mana non-creature, non-planeswalker is almost unkillable in this format. Plus, it turns any topdecked Gifts lethal.
How is our BGx matchup? What decks should I be most worried about seeing?
1) How important is the singleton Snapcaster? What would I be unable to do without him? I recognize Tiago's synergy with the control plan, but I'm wondering about his combo / value Gifts applications.
2) What I like most about the UR storm deck is that a cost reduction on turn 2 and a Ritual + Gifts on turn 3 is a win. Since I like being a deviant and cheating the system, I was wondering if a second Baral (or maybe a Goblin Electromancer because of the name Clause on Gifts) could be my replacement for Snapcaster. Granted, URw runs fewer rituals, but 2 outs to a turn 3 feel better than 1.
3) Lastly, what would you recommend as a sideboard? I don't see many posted here. But maybe I'm not looking hard enough.
Thanks a ton!
A turn one looting makes active Ascensions more feasible on turn 3, and Noxious Revival being free is a huge help. You can also pull some cantrip shenanigans with Revivals: With cantrip A in the yard, cast cantrip B. Ascension triggers. In response, cast Revival targeting cantrip A, which you then draw off of cantrip B and cast for the second Ascension counter. Revival's also nifty for fixing your Reveler draws, as it clears up your hand and buys back your best spells.
Looting is probably just a necessity now. At least beefing up on them beefs up our graveyard, which helps Ancestral Visions.
Turn 3 kills won't really be feasible anymore, though.
To extrapolate, the reason I don't think Surgical will replace Git Probe is that most decks have several more on-plan cards to replace it. Infect has Slip Through Space, Distortion Strike, and Blossoming Defense, which will likely just increase in numbers. Death's shadow might run more burn or a different pump spell, but phyrexian mana on SE makes this one a little more likely to show up in some numbers. Delver strategies will just play more generically good stuff or delirium enablers in place of probe.
Realistically, this means we play 4 Faithless Looting and 4 Sleight of Hand.
I agree that Visions can often be win-more, but I think we need to take what we can get as far as advantages over BGx. Really, I'm not too worried about our other matchups, as they don't have nearly the same history of oppressing this archetype in its various forms. Even Burn has some silver bullets against it that swing the match.
You didn't address the points I brought up about Remand? I went through the most relevant answers to our engines in the format and elaborated on why Remand isn't particularly good at answering any of them, as well as why Remand is subpar at disrupting an opponent (especially when our combo kill isn't as clean as Scapeshift and our game plan doesn't have as many outs as Blue Moon, USA, or the old Twin lists, which made the best use of Remand in the format's history.) Furthermore, using Remand to respond to 2 mana counters is sketchy unless you already have an Ascension on the board from a previous turn – holding up Remand + a threat means you're waiting until turn 4 to get the ball rolling.