Lightning Angel is good, I haven't seen that card for a long time outside it rarely making an appearance in Commander. I wouldn't run it over Resto Angel because losing Flash can be problematic but Resto Angel also has the added benefit of even when it's not blinking something like Clique or Snapcaster to re-trigger it's effect it can bounce Geist out of combat saving trades.
Other than that, just focusing purely on Lighting Angel, you're paying twice as much mana as a Serra Avenger to be outside of bolt range with haste. You're not gaining any extra damage output, it's presence coming down wont end the game or be incredibly disruptive like Linvala can be against some decks. Lightning Angel is a reliable clock over a period of time but doesn't provide the same kind of damage as something like Siege Rhino. I'd probably run a couple of Baneslayer Angel even with the extra cost if I wanted an additional beater.
As for Elspeth. She's really nice. She probably should see more play than she does. Tokens used her as a white token creator but the new Gideon is probably better for that. Outside of that she used to get played a lot in Bant decks alongside Noble Heirarch and the likes of Loxodon Smiter. I think she maybe has a place alongside Geist but I'd probably run a Bant list to take advantage of how well she works with cards like Noble Heirarch.
Originally I had GProbe which lets you cycle the deck without spending mana which is somewhat useful alongside a t3 mentor. In the end as GProbe is not instant I thought Visions could work better for finding useful cards more consistently. Really it's a turn 1 cast or something to do with excess late-game mana to ensure I'm not just getting land flooded when I could hit value.
Mid-game Serum Visions is not useful at all. If it was Instant it would work with Mentor. Instant speed 1 mana draw in Modern is bad though. Twisted Image would be somewhat useful for this against Spellskite but you can't cast it t1 almost all the time unless they drop an Ornithopter or something as it requires a target. Peek is an option but only borderline playable and even then you'd probably board it out once you have game one information.
Back on Remand as well there were originally 4 but I dropped 1 for Negate as there is stuff that you really need to stop in the meta like Scapeshift, Hive Mind and a Twin cast. Between Negate, Spell Pierce and Cryptic Command with the Snapcasters I feel okay in that regard. With Remand / Dispel as I originally had I felt vulnerable late-game to those high threat enchantments / sorceries.
I still like to see Mentor, I still like to have it come up as it really is a game ender. That's the reason I put Serum Visions in. Ultimately it's Control before it's Tempo as well, it's stronger in the midgame with active wincons at the cost of cards like Rev and more land which help in the long game.
If I dropped Visions I'd definitely run 4 Remands, I'm not sure on the extra Electrolyze but I could see myself running a Clique or two.
One thing I do value in every deck I build is consistency, I tend to avoid running 1-2s of things and when I do I have obvious this goes out for this and this goes in for this in flex spots.
It's basically a Control deck but a bit more on the tempo side with faster evolving win conditions. The aim is to counter anything that's not a creature and blow up anything that is. One reason it's not Black is Path annihilates everything like Wurmcoil, Finks and Deceiver Exarch. One of the wincons is just nailing them in the face with Burn and swinging with the white Colonnade. Monastery Mentor is a 5 - 6 mana bomb card. It comes down with mana to protect it / fire off spells and completely flips the game on it's head. Even coming down t3 if it lasts a turn it's basically over as it will get pumped behind a wall of a burn and even if you remove it there are tokens to do the same. I also find Mentor to be a powerful wincon because you generally don't want to run boardwipes/spot removal against control so they get a lot of cards in their hand to deal with it wasted for the majority or entirety of some games.
Some other basic explanations, I have 1 Cavern because it can stop them counterspelling 8 cards in my deck. Verdict is almost solely there for Geist but is generally not unwanted otherwise. Outside of that the deck is pretty flexible mainboard and has a very good match against creature heavy aggro (includes Robots, Fish, Elves, Zoo).
On the sideboard; Celestial Purge removes Keranos, Liliana, Blood Moon and the Twin enchantment. Gust / Stony Silence are obvious hosers against Affinity but Gust works well against Boggles and Stony Silence is decent against Tron if it comes down early (loads of rocks/maps). Skite is obvious against Infect, Bogles, Twin, even Burn. Prison is a non-artifact counter against Twin decks as they often run ways to deal with Spellskite / Torpor Orb. Crumble to Dust is there for Tron but if you can pull it off on Valakut it's hilarious. Reinforcements is obvious against Burn + Zoo. Leyline is for Burn, Jund, and other Jeskai, I typically run it against Scapeshift as well.
Bad matches are pretty much the incredibly degenerate combos like Bloom (Hive Mind), Living End, Ad Naeuseum, Storm... it's a bit too fair to deal with that stuff. I could run Rule of Law for some of it, Mindcensor for other stuff, grave hosers but they're a fairly tiny percent of the meta except Bloom which is beatable with smart counterspells+path and I feel I need the sideboard. Batterskull and Leyline can be annoying. It's a convincing reason to run Wear / Tear. Batterskull is falling out of fashion though and between Snapcasters, Mentor, Colonnade and just playing Control and bouncing it I can handle Leyline. It slows me, it doesn't stop me.
If you want to run Kiki-Jiki outside of Twin there is a Naya deck that is basically built to abuse him.
It uses the wall set (4x Omens, 4x Roots) to clog the ground and provide utility before using Chord of Calling to find Eternal Witness who gets back Chord of Calling. You then use Chord of Calling to find Resto Angel who bounces Witness and gets back Chord of Calling before using Chord to find Kiki and Kiki to copy the Resto Angel endlessly, combo and win. Outside of the combo Resto Angel can bounce Wall of Omens to turn itself into a cantrip.
Other than that it's just standard red / white. Lightning Bolt and Path, strong sideboard options, running Chord you can sort of run Pod creatures as well like Linvala vs. Twin and Sigarda vs. Jund, lifegain creatures like Lone Missionary or Finks as well that can be bounced.
Sabinfrost- monastery mentor seems pretty sweet. I just started playing UW miracles in legacy, and he is a house there. Still, the key difference is that there are some nice cheap cantrip spells in legacy that don't exist in modern (brainstorm at instant speed, for example). In that legacy deck, it coexists with 4 main deck sweepers (terminus), so running sweepers with the mentor isn't totally out of the question, though you can shuffle away the sweepers in legacy with brainstorm/jace. I wonder if new jace might work well with mentor since he lets you discard unnecessary sweepers in that situation. (Seems like lots of grixis and even twin decks are turning to new jace.) Or desolate lighthouse. I'd think 4-of serum visions would be pretty fantastic in a mentor deck, and something like thought scour and peek (instant speed one mana cantrips) seem ok. I will try it out if I get my hands on a couple more mentors. How is the deck performing for you?
I run a lot of cheap stuff and stuff that replaces itself. I run 4 copies of Lightning Bolt, 4 Paths, 4 Serum Visions, 4 Lightning Helix, 4 Remand, Snapcasters, Mentors and I curve at Cryptic Command. Other than that I run a couple of copies of Electrolyze and Spell Snare. Post-board it's very strong and mainboard it's very flexible. Lots of removal for different threats, some lifegain, lots of direct damage, a finisher in Mentor and loads of cantrips. I love Remand over typical counterspells for finding mentor and not exhausting my hand so if I want to go all out the turn after I drop a Mentor I can. It's a very consistent deck. I haven't wanted to swap anything out of it.
For the guy above I always have a Fracturing Gust in-case I run into Bogles. It's good against Robots as well. I generally run a couple of Spellskites on my sideboard as well, they work really well against Bogles, Twin and Infect. Those decks tend to run Twisted Image because of it at high level but it still doesn't invalidate how useful Skite is.
I really wish people would look into the criteria Wizards maintains for its bans before cluelessly yelling about Bloom taking a hit in every single thread.
Pros have an issue with Hive Mind mostly. It's very unlikely you lose the game outright turn 2 but it's possible to die to a t2 combo from Bloom. A lot of Pros and others dislike that you need to essentially deal with Bloom in two different ways, as a ramp deck with Titans and as a combo deck with Hive Mind. It's not clueless at all to speculate that it's status might change because it's placing well at a number of big events and is mostly non-interactive.
hey guys, just wondering, been off the local tournament circuit for a little over a year, kept with it by watching twitch and casual play but I'm wondering is it time to push UWR as a viable deck strat for tourney play? Is it well positioned? Yes tron is out there but pod is banned, scapeshift is nearly gone in play... Whenever i see decklists posted, seems like people are doing very well....
I'm doing well with my version at smaller events. I've got some GP trials coming up and a GP in March so I might run it at that. I'm going spell heavy with 4 Snapcasters and 4 Monastery Mentors. I'm not so sure how the traditional Geist versions are performing because I never see them where I play and I don't often hear too many results at big events. The ban list at the start of the next year is going to be interesting as well if speculation is correct and Bloom takes a hit. Bloom isn't generally very fun for fairer decks like Jeskai midrange and if it suddenly disappeared we might be in a better position.
Agreed. The deck is absolutely a great one to run locally. I've top 8'ed all three PPTQs I've taken this deck to (each 50+ people) and got 17th out of 300+ people at a WMCQ. At smaller local tournaments I usually expect to go 3-1. GreatNate took the deck to an RPTQ, and there are occasional solid performances at the GP level despite the very small number of people running it. The deck rewards tight play and continual tuning of the sideboard (and flexible main board slots) based on the meta. I've posted a few times on this deck, and each of the lists had some significant differences based on the meta I expected. The deck has access to many powerful options for fine tuning (like stony silence, keranos, celestial purge, timely reinforcements, rest in peace, dispel), and you have to choose wisely based on what you expect to see.
The deck is not easy to play at first, so expect growing pains. It's not only a matter of figuring out who is on the beat down based on the matchup (tron, amulet, burn, etc), but also figuring out how the board state changes turn to turn. You can switch from control to aggro on a dime. Against burn, you have to flip the switch on the correct turn to finish them off quickly, or you lose. Against GBx, you sometimes have to give up on the board state and card advantage, switching to the burnout plan. These decisions can even change during the course of the game. Figuring out when to slam Geist or activate a colonnade isnt trivial, either, and I think Geistofstdoom or someone else just addressed that point. Run this deck only if you like making these sorts of decisions.
Also on counterspells, since this is a point of debate: highly dependent on meta and plan fitting the meta (Aggro/control). I love 2 spell snares main. Not only great turn 2, but throughout the game and easily flashed back with snapcaster. The mana leak-remand split is something I go back and forth on. I like 2-2 right now, but you won't find a consensus because everyone's meta is different. Mana leak is great vs combo, aggro, and hard-to-answer cards like Liliana. (Generally I board in specific answers to those cards and board out some number of mana leaks in those match ups. Mana leak is a so-so catch-all answer, and the board is a place for stronger specific ones.). Remand is great elsewhere, like vs control (I wrote a post earlier about that), against delved spells, the back half of lingering souls, living end, and tempo-ing slower decks out. I ran serum visions/cryotics before when i could go over the top of other decks, but lately, I've gone with a lower to the ground approach. You can mess with people by going back and forth between weeks if you play at local tournaments with the same players routinely.
I posted my deck back a few pages ago I think but it's essentially a Control deck. I run 4 copies of Monastery Mentor however and I find it's very powerful as people tend to want to board out spot removal against Control and never think to run sweepers so if Mentor lasts even a single turn I can put the game completely out of reach. Failing that it just kills with Burn / Colonnades which works perfectly fine.
hey guys, just wondering, been off the local tournament circuit for a little over a year, kept with it by watching twitch and casual play but I'm wondering is it time to push UWR as a viable deck strat for tourney play? Is it well positioned? Yes tron is out there but pod is banned, scapeshift is nearly gone in play... Whenever i see decklists posted, seems like people are doing very well....
I'm doing well with my version at smaller events. I've got some GP trials coming up and a GP in March so I might run it at that. I'm going spell heavy with 4 Snapcasters and 4 Monastery Mentors. I'm not so sure how the traditional Geist versions are performing because I never see them where I play and I don't often hear too many results at big events. The ban list at the start of the next year is going to be interesting as well if speculation is correct and Bloom takes a hit. Bloom isn't generally very fun for fairer decks like Jeskai midrange and if it suddenly disappeared we might be in a better position.
Sabinfrost, I like the idea of Mentor as a wincon and will be interested to hear how it tests out. I like that you can choose "human" on Cavern so that Snap and Mentor are both counter-proof. I understand the appeal of G-Probes for 0 mana with Mentor, but would be concerned that they don't do much in multiples when Mentor isn't in play. My own inclination would be to swap some probes for Serum Visions, though of course I have no testing to back that up.
That was the reason I took 1 Cavern. 8 targets. I didn't want to run too many as the deck really wants around 20 blue sources to make Cryptic Command consistent.
I had Serum Visions initially but I went with GProbe because the shock cast also means you can cycle a card turn 1 while dropping a tapped land (like Colonnade) or leaving a mana open for Spell Snare on the draw. That's all while getting hand information. Hand information helps a lot I find, it lets me know what I should be saving certain cards for, what to play around. It also lets you play a Snapcaster as a blocker turn 2 and draw a card out of it for the shock on 2 mana. That turn 2 double play is only moderately useful but it's something that Serum Visions can't do. Scry is funny as well with fetchlands shuffling the deck but that's kind of minor I suppose.
This is my new deck that I'm possibly going to take to a GP next year barring potential modifications and the sideboard which I'll build as close as possible to the actual date,
It's more a Control deck than a Midrange deck but the guys in the Control thread would call it Midrange because it has more of a tempo style win con (Mentor) and it runs 24 land. Gameplan is pretty simple, drop Mentor or Burn kill them, Colonnades are an option in longer games. Mentor is incredibly powerful, if he can stick a turn the game is basically over.
Mantis Rider has the old dies to Bolt problem. Even though it's a good card it's nowhere near as good a card in Modern as Standard. It could still maybe work in the right deck.
Ah yeah, my bad, got it mixed up with the indestructible one. Emrakul is basically GG in any case but if you Crumble to Dust one of their Tronlands it becomes practically impossible to cast and Path deals with Wurmcoil Engine.
The deck is running Red so Fulminator Mage is an optional sideboard that would help with Tron. Mainboard Path to Exile works in that match up for killing Wurmcoil and Emrakul as well.
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Other than that, just focusing purely on Lighting Angel, you're paying twice as much mana as a Serra Avenger to be outside of bolt range with haste. You're not gaining any extra damage output, it's presence coming down wont end the game or be incredibly disruptive like Linvala can be against some decks. Lightning Angel is a reliable clock over a period of time but doesn't provide the same kind of damage as something like Siege Rhino. I'd probably run a couple of Baneslayer Angel even with the extra cost if I wanted an additional beater.
As for Elspeth. She's really nice. She probably should see more play than she does. Tokens used her as a white token creator but the new Gideon is probably better for that. Outside of that she used to get played a lot in Bant decks alongside Noble Heirarch and the likes of Loxodon Smiter. I think she maybe has a place alongside Geist but I'd probably run a Bant list to take advantage of how well she works with cards like Noble Heirarch.
Mid-game Serum Visions is not useful at all. If it was Instant it would work with Mentor. Instant speed 1 mana draw in Modern is bad though. Twisted Image would be somewhat useful for this against Spellskite but you can't cast it t1 almost all the time unless they drop an Ornithopter or something as it requires a target. Peek is an option but only borderline playable and even then you'd probably board it out once you have game one information.
Back on Remand as well there were originally 4 but I dropped 1 for Negate as there is stuff that you really need to stop in the meta like Scapeshift, Hive Mind and a Twin cast. Between Negate, Spell Pierce and Cryptic Command with the Snapcasters I feel okay in that regard. With Remand / Dispel as I originally had I felt vulnerable late-game to those high threat enchantments / sorceries.
If I dropped Visions I'd definitely run 4 Remands, I'm not sure on the extra Electrolyze but I could see myself running a Clique or two.
One thing I do value in every deck I build is consistency, I tend to avoid running 1-2s of things and when I do I have obvious this goes out for this and this goes in for this in flex spots.
4 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Spell Pierce
3 Remand
1 Negate
4 Lightning Helix
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Monastery Mentor
2 Electrolyze
3 Cryptic Command
1 Supreme Verdict
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain
2 Steam Vents
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Sacred Foundry
3 Sulfur Falls
1 Cavern of Souls
4 Celestial Colonnade
1 Fracturing Gust
2 Stony Silence
2 Spellskite
1 Ghostly Prison
2 Crumble to Dust
3 Timely Reinforcements
2 Leyline of Sanctity
It's basically a Control deck but a bit more on the tempo side with faster evolving win conditions. The aim is to counter anything that's not a creature and blow up anything that is. One reason it's not Black is Path annihilates everything like Wurmcoil, Finks and Deceiver Exarch. One of the wincons is just nailing them in the face with Burn and swinging with the white Colonnade. Monastery Mentor is a 5 - 6 mana bomb card. It comes down with mana to protect it / fire off spells and completely flips the game on it's head. Even coming down t3 if it lasts a turn it's basically over as it will get pumped behind a wall of a burn and even if you remove it there are tokens to do the same. I also find Mentor to be a powerful wincon because you generally don't want to run boardwipes/spot removal against control so they get a lot of cards in their hand to deal with it wasted for the majority or entirety of some games.
Some other basic explanations, I have 1 Cavern because it can stop them counterspelling 8 cards in my deck. Verdict is almost solely there for Geist but is generally not unwanted otherwise. Outside of that the deck is pretty flexible mainboard and has a very good match against creature heavy aggro (includes Robots, Fish, Elves, Zoo).
On the sideboard; Celestial Purge removes Keranos, Liliana, Blood Moon and the Twin enchantment. Gust / Stony Silence are obvious hosers against Affinity but Gust works well against Boggles and Stony Silence is decent against Tron if it comes down early (loads of rocks/maps). Skite is obvious against Infect, Bogles, Twin, even Burn. Prison is a non-artifact counter against Twin decks as they often run ways to deal with Spellskite / Torpor Orb. Crumble to Dust is there for Tron but if you can pull it off on Valakut it's hilarious. Reinforcements is obvious against Burn + Zoo. Leyline is for Burn, Jund, and other Jeskai, I typically run it against Scapeshift as well.
Bad matches are pretty much the incredibly degenerate combos like Bloom (Hive Mind), Living End, Ad Naeuseum, Storm... it's a bit too fair to deal with that stuff. I could run Rule of Law for some of it, Mindcensor for other stuff, grave hosers but they're a fairly tiny percent of the meta except Bloom which is beatable with smart counterspells+path and I feel I need the sideboard. Batterskull and Leyline can be annoying. It's a convincing reason to run Wear / Tear. Batterskull is falling out of fashion though and between Snapcasters, Mentor, Colonnade and just playing Control and bouncing it I can handle Leyline. It slows me, it doesn't stop me.
It uses the wall set (4x Omens, 4x Roots) to clog the ground and provide utility before using Chord of Calling to find Eternal Witness who gets back Chord of Calling. You then use Chord of Calling to find Resto Angel who bounces Witness and gets back Chord of Calling before using Chord to find Kiki and Kiki to copy the Resto Angel endlessly, combo and win. Outside of the combo Resto Angel can bounce Wall of Omens to turn itself into a cantrip.
Other than that it's just standard red / white. Lightning Bolt and Path, strong sideboard options, running Chord you can sort of run Pod creatures as well like Linvala vs. Twin and Sigarda vs. Jund, lifegain creatures like Lone Missionary or Finks as well that can be bounced.
I run a lot of cheap stuff and stuff that replaces itself. I run 4 copies of Lightning Bolt, 4 Paths, 4 Serum Visions, 4 Lightning Helix, 4 Remand, Snapcasters, Mentors and I curve at Cryptic Command. Other than that I run a couple of copies of Electrolyze and Spell Snare. Post-board it's very strong and mainboard it's very flexible. Lots of removal for different threats, some lifegain, lots of direct damage, a finisher in Mentor and loads of cantrips. I love Remand over typical counterspells for finding mentor and not exhausting my hand so if I want to go all out the turn after I drop a Mentor I can. It's a very consistent deck. I haven't wanted to swap anything out of it.
For the guy above I always have a Fracturing Gust in-case I run into Bogles. It's good against Robots as well. I generally run a couple of Spellskites on my sideboard as well, they work really well against Bogles, Twin and Infect. Those decks tend to run Twisted Image because of it at high level but it still doesn't invalidate how useful Skite is.
Pros have an issue with Hive Mind mostly. It's very unlikely you lose the game outright turn 2 but it's possible to die to a t2 combo from Bloom. A lot of Pros and others dislike that you need to essentially deal with Bloom in two different ways, as a ramp deck with Titans and as a combo deck with Hive Mind. It's not clueless at all to speculate that it's status might change because it's placing well at a number of big events and is mostly non-interactive.
I posted my deck back a few pages ago I think but it's essentially a Control deck. I run 4 copies of Monastery Mentor however and I find it's very powerful as people tend to want to board out spot removal against Control and never think to run sweepers so if Mentor lasts even a single turn I can put the game completely out of reach. Failing that it just kills with Burn / Colonnades which works perfectly fine.
I'm doing well with my version at smaller events. I've got some GP trials coming up and a GP in March so I might run it at that. I'm going spell heavy with 4 Snapcasters and 4 Monastery Mentors. I'm not so sure how the traditional Geist versions are performing because I never see them where I play and I don't often hear too many results at big events. The ban list at the start of the next year is going to be interesting as well if speculation is correct and Bloom takes a hit. Bloom isn't generally very fun for fairer decks like Jeskai midrange and if it suddenly disappeared we might be in a better position.
That was the reason I took 1 Cavern. 8 targets. I didn't want to run too many as the deck really wants around 20 blue sources to make Cryptic Command consistent.
I had Serum Visions initially but I went with GProbe because the shock cast also means you can cycle a card turn 1 while dropping a tapped land (like Colonnade) or leaving a mana open for Spell Snare on the draw. That's all while getting hand information. Hand information helps a lot I find, it lets me know what I should be saving certain cards for, what to play around. It also lets you play a Snapcaster as a blocker turn 2 and draw a card out of it for the shock on 2 mana. That turn 2 double play is only moderately useful but it's something that Serum Visions can't do. Scry is funny as well with fetchlands shuffling the deck but that's kind of minor I suppose.
4 Path to Exile
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Spell Snare
4 Remand
4 Lightning Helix
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Monastery Mentor
2 Electrolyze
3 Cryptic Command
1 Supreme Verdict
4 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Mountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Sacred Foundry
4 Sulfur Falls
1 Cavern of Souls
4 Celestial Colonnade
It's more a Control deck than a Midrange deck but the guys in the Control thread would call it Midrange because it has more of a tempo style win con (Mentor) and it runs 24 land. Gameplan is pretty simple, drop Mentor or Burn kill them, Colonnades are an option in longer games. Mentor is incredibly powerful, if he can stick a turn the game is basically over.