isn't unflinching courage better vs burn than leyline?
Being an 8rack play I can tell you for sure that Bogles does run Leyline. That said, whether they WILL use leyline vs UWR is another matter. And even if they saw Flare in game 2, I still dont think that they would risk Mulliganing to get to it on game 3.
I think that the big difference between those two arguments is that Bogles boards don't typically run Needle. They do run Stony Silence and/or Suppression Field, but neither those cards nor Needle are consistent inclusions. Leyline, on the other hand, is an auto-include staple in the Bogles board, so I would be hesitant to bank that matchup on a card I know they will have in their sideboard.
Are you suggesting they are actually going to EXPECT Celestial Flare? Whatever, point is moot. The guy asked for a card that was good vs Bogles and was thankful for the answer of Celestial Flare. I could say here UWR Midrange is a great deck and derps would tell me I'm wrong just to argue a point.
I don't understand why flare is good against boggles. Are you guys assuming that they don't sideboard? They will sideboard leyline of sanctity against us, which shuts off flare.
I don't understand why Explosives is good against boggles. Are you guys assuming that they don't sideboard? They will sideboard Pithing Needle against us, which shuts off Explosives.
flare is actually terrible against jund, it's bad vs drs and bob, it's also bad versus discard since you can't use effectively in response to discard
but yeah if people are given the tried and true sideboard card(s) vs certain archetypes and don't like them, then the other option is play a different deck if you don't like your bogle/affinity match up and don't want to play the sideboard cards suggested
Its bad vs discard but ive used in in UW decks to great effect vs Jund. Between Counterspells and removal they are very rarely attacking with mass creatures. It catches goyfs and ooze almost always when cast. I mean it might not be ideal but its far from a dead card.
What else is Celestial Flare good against, though? Especially since Boggles is tier 2 at best. Seems weird to SB something for a Tier 2 deck.
Who cares?
People are asking for help against Bogle. I gave them a solution. Maybe their meta has tons of Bogles. Anyways Flare is pretty good against Jund too.
Everyone keeps saying engineered explosives. I don't know what boggle decks you guys play but most have 4-6 copies of totem armor enchants. Even if the enchant has a cmc of 1 the creature and other (non cmc 1) enchants survive the explosives. totem armor is slightly annoying...
Any sideboard advice against affinity and boggles? I cant remember what it was but theres a creature that gives all artifacts an upkeep cost. Anyone using that?
Against Bogle you run Celestial Flare. Works quite well because their Totem Armor does nothing vs Sacrifice.
I just went back and checked the last 30 pages of this thread. Can you guess how many deck lists contained 4x Leyline of Sanctity? None. In fact only 1 list contained ANY Leylines. MeinKamphire (how he gets away with a name like that I have no idea) suggested 2x Leylines in a sideboard. Thats it.
My point you see, if you had thoroughly read my earlier post, was that while its ridiculously easy to hate out fringe decks, it is simultaneously impossible to waste deck space to protect yourself from a deck you are very unlikely to ever face. This is the art of meta assassination. You find common weaknesses in these cookie cutter netdecks and you can attack them as a whole because they are so predictable.
Meta assassins need not fear the myriad hate cards that can cause them problems, because netdecks will only prepare to fight other netdecks. And why shouldn't they? Netdecking makes up basically the entire meta as a whole. It's a predictable system that a savvy mind with a desire to punish people who fail to innovate can have a lot of fun with.
Do remember that discard is specially effective vs counterspells and is the most efficient way to get rid of geist, so UWR decks (mainly control, but midrange too to a certain degree) ARE vulnerable to such strategies.
Try the same thing vs melira pod, junk or jund, and lets see how that goes.
Meh. Discussing 8rack matchup vs other decks would derail this thread. I only bring it up here because the guy asked how fringe decks can threaten uwr. My point was that fringe decks attack at angles that the predictable netdecks cannot prepare for. This point is well demonstrated in the 8rack vs uwr match up.
Damn it Jim I'm a brewer, not a fortune teller. Jan Miller took 8Rack to 87th place in it's first appearance in a GP, and he was quite new to the deck. I make no claims that 8Rack is capable of winning a GP, but then again who knows. I have personally won 4 daily's with it in the last 3 weeks. The most recent win I beat UWR midrange in the final round. He was running those laughable blade splicers, and was thoroughly trounced.
I am curious, what makes fringe decks tough versus this deck?
Fringe decks steal wins by attacking at angles you are not prepared for. Take 8Rack for example. Hand control strategies (discard decks) are not well represented in modern, despite being strictly superior to their mass-counterspell deck cousins.
I can take 8Rack and consistently mop the floor with any UWR deck, be it control or midrange. It's not even difficult, discard the counterspells and or few critters and UWR is left with an agonizingly slow burn deck. Discard is immune to counterspells, and without those, UWR is left woefully vulnerable.
Can you defend yourself against Discard with the proper cards? Of course. Will you devote precious deck space to do so? Of course not. This conundrum is why meta assassin decks like 8Rack can prey upon the netdecking masses.
Netdeckers all share the same weakness: predictability. The savvy meta assassin can punish those who are unable or unwilling to innovate, but still want to play MTG.
There is no established core, we are trying to interact with our opponents. Geist is better at this time but for some reason maybe tomorrow everyone starts playing lil decks. Great we are now prepared to switch our gameplan for the splicer, angel build.
There should not be a core you 'must' play, as a player you should playtest your deck and tweak it according to your playstyle, christ deckbuilding is such an important part of the game and not learning it will impact on your play. Yes I said that, deckbuilding helps you play, youll understand stats and chances and bluffs and reads far better.
You aren't telling me anything I don't already know. Deck building and innovating is what I am good at. There is, however, an advantage to consolidating a core for this deck and establishing an identity - we can begin to quantify the deck and develop consistent strategies regarding it. If you leave this thread to the way it has been in the past you are basically talking about a whole range of decks, varying from the highly aggro to the borderline control. The line where a deck like this ceases to become "UWR Midrange" needs to be drawn. The GP winning list was borderline UWR control. I submit that discussions should be focused on walking that fine line between midrange and control.
Every netdeck has a core, Jund, Pod, even Red Burn which has a multitude of interchangeable spells. Without a defining core the thread and deck becomes convoluted and almost impossible to develop. How can someone with a good idea respond to a post if he has no idea what version the poster is running?
Way to completely miss the point of what I was saying dude. I agree that Geist is the correct choice in this deck, check my post before that. And yes I understand you are trying to help the people in this thread to reach a consensus on the best core of the deck, but you have to use real arguments.
You can't come in here and spout stuff that is blatantly wrong as your evidence for the superiority of Geist and that was what I was pointing out. Once again your zealousness in getting everyone to agree with your point of view has completely undermined your argument. What happens if a new player comes in here and no one calls you on how blatantly wrong that was. They run out Geist because they think its a strong play against lil decks?
Splicer is better against Lil. Fact. Geist dies to a lil played after him always. Just deal and reason your arguments better.
I linked the results of SPlicer in tournys and the results of Geist in tourneys. Geist won the GP. DO i really need to keep justifying Geist? If you actually agree he belongs here then how about hopping on board and working towards a consolidated core that defines the deck instead of nitpicking and arguing semantics about hypothetical situations.
I agree with tiago's view point here. At what stage is geist good against lil? Lil has haste and geist doesn't, Splicer wins against a +1 or a -2, whereas geist only wins against a +1. I highly doubt you'll have more fodder to sac to lil's edicts in this deck.
Point is Splicer is card advantage while geist is a dumb, had to interact with beater. If the deck runs edicts then geist is worse against it than splicer.
The point is you have access to counterspells to back up the Geist at which point he is completely superior to Spilcer in every way. Was it just coincidence that the GP Prague winner ran 0 Splicers and 4 Geists with 3 Cryptic Commands backing it up? Let's learn from our successes as well as our failures no?
that was always the basic shell. the only thing that was even questionable about this list was geist and cryptic. people have long considered finks and splicer in the 3 slot, and naturally, along with those two, restoration angel is played as a 1-3 of.
You say it was always the core shell, but then turn around and question the two most immutable entries on the list - Geist and Cryptic. Later in the discussion people pick out other pieces of the shell. Eventually you are back to square 1 where everyone is running lists that are so different in mana curve and play style that the only thing they really have in common is the fact that they are all UWR.
Doesn't the GP victory give the deck a focal point? Why not take that list and start spinning lines out from that core shell instead plugging along using cards like Blade Splicer which are just not getting the job done?
Isn't this just a win more scenario?
Being an 8rack play I can tell you for sure that Bogles does run Leyline. That said, whether they WILL use leyline vs UWR is another matter. And even if they saw Flare in game 2, I still dont think that they would risk Mulliganing to get to it on game 3.
Are you suggesting they are actually going to EXPECT Celestial Flare? Whatever, point is moot. The guy asked for a card that was good vs Bogles and was thankful for the answer of Celestial Flare. I could say here UWR Midrange is a great deck and derps would tell me I'm wrong just to argue a point.
Rofl by this logic you could also say:
Its bad vs discard but ive used in in UW decks to great effect vs Jund. Between Counterspells and removal they are very rarely attacking with mass creatures. It catches goyfs and ooze almost always when cast. I mean it might not be ideal but its far from a dead card.
Who cares?
People are asking for help against Bogle. I gave them a solution. Maybe their meta has tons of Bogles. Anyways Flare is pretty good against Jund too.
Use.
Celestial.
Flare.
Against Bogle you run Celestial Flare. Works quite well because their Totem Armor does nothing vs Sacrifice.
I just went back and checked the last 30 pages of this thread. Can you guess how many deck lists contained 4x Leyline of Sanctity? None. In fact only 1 list contained ANY Leylines. MeinKamphire (how he gets away with a name like that I have no idea) suggested 2x Leylines in a sideboard. Thats it.
My point you see, if you had thoroughly read my earlier post, was that while its ridiculously easy to hate out fringe decks, it is simultaneously impossible to waste deck space to protect yourself from a deck you are very unlikely to ever face. This is the art of meta assassination. You find common weaknesses in these cookie cutter netdecks and you can attack them as a whole because they are so predictable.
Meta assassins need not fear the myriad hate cards that can cause them problems, because netdecks will only prepare to fight other netdecks. And why shouldn't they? Netdecking makes up basically the entire meta as a whole. It's a predictable system that a savvy mind with a desire to punish people who fail to innovate can have a lot of fun with.
Meh. Discussing 8rack matchup vs other decks would derail this thread. I only bring it up here because the guy asked how fringe decks can threaten uwr. My point was that fringe decks attack at angles that the predictable netdecks cannot prepare for. This point is well demonstrated in the 8rack vs uwr match up.
Damn it Jim I'm a brewer, not a fortune teller. Jan Miller took 8Rack to 87th place in it's first appearance in a GP, and he was quite new to the deck. I make no claims that 8Rack is capable of winning a GP, but then again who knows. I have personally won 4 daily's with it in the last 3 weeks. The most recent win I beat UWR midrange in the final round. He was running those laughable blade splicers, and was thoroughly trounced.
Fringe decks steal wins by attacking at angles you are not prepared for. Take 8Rack for example. Hand control strategies (discard decks) are not well represented in modern, despite being strictly superior to their mass-counterspell deck cousins.
I can take 8Rack and consistently mop the floor with any UWR deck, be it control or midrange. It's not even difficult, discard the counterspells and or few critters and UWR is left with an agonizingly slow burn deck. Discard is immune to counterspells, and without those, UWR is left woefully vulnerable.
Can you defend yourself against Discard with the proper cards? Of course. Will you devote precious deck space to do so? Of course not. This conundrum is why meta assassin decks like 8Rack can prey upon the netdecking masses.
Netdeckers all share the same weakness: predictability. The savvy meta assassin can punish those who are unable or unwilling to innovate, but still want to play MTG.
Good times.
You aren't telling me anything I don't already know. Deck building and innovating is what I am good at. There is, however, an advantage to consolidating a core for this deck and establishing an identity - we can begin to quantify the deck and develop consistent strategies regarding it. If you leave this thread to the way it has been in the past you are basically talking about a whole range of decks, varying from the highly aggro to the borderline control. The line where a deck like this ceases to become "UWR Midrange" needs to be drawn. The GP winning list was borderline UWR control. I submit that discussions should be focused on walking that fine line between midrange and control.
Every netdeck has a core, Jund, Pod, even Red Burn which has a multitude of interchangeable spells. Without a defining core the thread and deck becomes convoluted and almost impossible to develop. How can someone with a good idea respond to a post if he has no idea what version the poster is running?
I linked the results of SPlicer in tournys and the results of Geist in tourneys. Geist won the GP. DO i really need to keep justifying Geist? If you actually agree he belongs here then how about hopping on board and working towards a consolidated core that defines the deck instead of nitpicking and arguing semantics about hypothetical situations.
The point is you have access to counterspells to back up the Geist at which point he is completely superior to Spilcer in every way. Was it just coincidence that the GP Prague winner ran 0 Splicers and 4 Geists with 3 Cryptic Commands backing it up? Let's learn from our successes as well as our failures no?
You say it was always the core shell, but then turn around and question the two most immutable entries on the list - Geist and Cryptic. Later in the discussion people pick out other pieces of the shell. Eventually you are back to square 1 where everyone is running lists that are so different in mana curve and play style that the only thing they really have in common is the fact that they are all UWR.
Doesn't the GP victory give the deck a focal point? Why not take that list and start spinning lines out from that core shell instead plugging along using cards like Blade Splicer which are just not getting the job done?
Compare Geist's presence in tournaments: http://www.mtgo-stats.com/cards/Geist%20of%20Saint%20Traft
to Splicer's: http://www.mtgo-stats.com/cards/Blade%20Splicer