MTG Salvation

Quote from amalek0 »

I look at shaheens list in every format to figure out what the biggest possible impact sideboard cards are for every match, because that's how he builds his decks--piles of the biggest impact cards. With little or no regard for having a cohesive deck or gameplan in a matchup he doesn't pre-plan bombs for.

If you look at his mtgo results, he's pretty consistently worse than most of the dedicated modern control streamers. Donny is probably a 60% winrate in competitive leagues if he puts in the reps on Esper. That's as good as shaheen's usual win rate in paper events, which have a softer field and a wider variety of decks.

I don’t think the leagues are stronger fields than Day 2 of GPs or the PT — where he’s been spotted a dozen times.

Maintaining a high winrate on MTGO is cool and all, but the prize payout for T8 a premier event is exponentially higher. So Test online, tweak, and play your heart out — but don’t treat it as canon.

As an aside: I’ve never seen someone skip their entire turn in a paper event, or yield through lethal combat, or suddenly stop responding for 10 minutes and then lose. The field is soft

Quote from Sifr »

So are you running into a lot of blue mirrors and you're looking for a trump? I play on MODO and the metagame has become maybe 50% Blood Moon decks so I haven't been much concerned with mirrors. IF you are concerned, Anguished Unmaking is a great card, but Vendilion Clique is practically a combo with JAce, and I've been running 2 maindeck in every list since I started playing him. Not only does it block attackers, it strips card like Blood Moon so that you can actually tap out for the Jace the next turn.

Also, I played a UWR deck through a league the other day and had so much room in the aideboard that I tried out a Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir. Still haven't gotten to use it, but it should work well given how people are just slamming planeswalkers in mirrors, these days.

On another note, I don't find that Esper Charm synergizes with Jace at all, in fact I think the two are bumping shoulders, similar to Snapcaster and Jace.

You must be playing in friendly leagues or having a bad string of MUs, because I’ve recorded almost 100 matches in comp since the unbanning and even POSSIBLE blood moon decks (stretching to include fetchless storm, every UR deck even though not all play it, et al) is still less than 15%.

Re: Esper charm + Jace, Esper charm dumps their hand, hits that blood moon you’re worried about, blows up D sphere on your jace, draws cards when you’re at parity, et al. Charm is more important now than ever, in my opinion.

Agreed, I’ve not been very impressed with Jtms sitting across the table from me.

No pro teams showed up with a Control deck because that’s how you get a 6-4 record at the Pro Tour. Typically the guys who show up playing Control are the ones who are very strong limited players, because they don’t want any single MU to punt them out of cashing the event.

Better draft players play safer decks because they expect to have better records, while less experienced or skilled drafters play decks with more 8-2 capability to make up for their poor draft performances.

You find that kind of metagaming almost exclusively at the highest levels of play, whereas at Opens its all constructed or all limited and if you’re no good st that format you typically don’t register. Pro Tour doesn’t have that luxury.

In regards to your list with Azcanta: I think you could actually cut the third copy for either the snap or the StW, I’d lean towards snap in grindy meta and stw in combo meta. Could also be a MB Halo for one more SB Slot. I like the list

With 7 manlands, he’s probably a little more aggressive than most lists.

I think if we go with a list that can capitalize on azcanta, we gain points. It’s just so powerful

We cannot keep up with a free impulse every turn. Resolving a rev requires the opponent to tap out, have no cards left, or leaving mana up to counter their counter. All of these are making Rev less attractive in the mirror.

When we rev EOT and tap them out, we don’t have a follow up play. When they do it on our EOT, they slam Elspeth or Gideon or Geist or whatever they have in hand.

Yea, we can Esper Charm their enchantment. Meaning they either got a scry out of it while we trade down on mana and hope they don’t have a counter, kill it on our turn (allows follow up play on their part), or hope we find a 1-2 of land destruction. And that we find it in a timely fashion, not before or else they destroy it, not after or they get extra value.

Personally I haven’t lost to Affinity more than a handful of times ever, regardless of deck I’m playing, but most affinity pilots aren’t very good. Kind of like a good burn player... very rare, but the good ones ROFLstomp

This whole debate centers around why someone would play Jeskai over Esper, and I gave a lot of broad examples. Again, I’d rather jam Jeskai or UW against an open meta. Being able to quickly turn the corner and punish a stumbling opponent is that decks strength. We will never have that.

Esper is better on the stack, but our status as the best late game control deck just isn’t true anymore, especially if we aren’t playing Search to keep up with Jeskai. Just plain facts

Well I hate to burst your bubble, but I believe the finals of SCG Columbus both had 3 Electrolyze in their MB. I know 1st place for sure did.

And while Shadow might beat up on a decent or average Jeskai player, Jeskai has a great shadow MU. Ask the shadow forum if you’d like. Or watch the pros piloting Shadow on their Twitch. Or watch the coverage from events of Shadow vs Jeskai. It’s not an obliteration, but 60-40 in Jeskai favor isn’t unrealistic.

The deck with 4 Snapcaster, 8 Bolt, flash flying creatures, and Colonnade? Safe to say your life total is not safe at 9.

Grixis death shadow was the most represented deck Day 2 in Columbus open by a fair margin (10 copies to 6 copies of second most), Jeskai pilots that got 1st and 2nd clearly had to fend them off at least somewhat effectively.

And I’ll say it again, Affinity is NOT a good MU. You might have beaten your buddy umpteen thousand times, that’s fine. My buddy plays TitanShift religiously ever since he started playing Modern and I still thoroughly trash him with Jund, Esper, Affinity, and whatever other deck I pick up. He’s a fine player, few Top 32, but that’s so anecdotal and we know each other so well that it’s largely irrelevant.

Esper has zero ways to interact with a resolved Cranial Plating, and only a couple ways to interact with a resolves Etched Champion - and they play 4 of each. Not to mention Welding Jar to save from the first Wrath (Affinity lists play 0-2 right now). And then let’s not forget to mention that your t4 Wrath is cute until they fire up double manlands and equip a plating for GG that route too.

If you don’t resolve stony silence or have the perfect sequence, that MU is as good as over. And G1 isn’t good for us. Point blank, period.

I don’t know about you guys but my FNM/TNM events are just a testing grounds for a bunch of SCG grinders, less than a handful of the 40+ are casuals... Lol

Regarding our list vs Jeskai: it’s largely the Deaths shadow MU. Against Red decks, they absolutely have to respect the Bolt-snap-bolt sequence to end the game. It gives them more time because GDS will play a slower game to avoid that. It’s one of their worse MUs for sure.

Not to mention that Red gives them Staticaster AND Anger of the Gods, which are both great ways to combat Dredge without impacting your own powerful GY interactions. On top of that, they get Electrolyze for their Card Advantage over Esper Charm.

Against almost every creature based deck, I’d rather be casting Electrolyze than Esper Charm. We have a better combo MU because we have better ways to attack their hand and the stack, but our deck isn’t as well positioned against Affinity as Jeskai (despite what everyone seems to think, it’s nowhere near a “good” MU. Just a lot of bad affinity players out there). Elves and Coco decks are harder for us than Jeskai also.

Just to put some points on the table for why top level players choose Jeskai over Esper.

Honestly I think I’ve only went to turns 2 times ever playing Esper Draw Go, a Key element for successful control players is knowing when it’s relatively safe to turn the corner and win with colonnade and snapcaster.

Souls was better when the biggest threat we had to worry about was a Tarmogoyf (with no trample). Now Eldrazi Tron just laughs at 1/1 Tokens, and while Affinity certainly doesn’t *like* to see the card, it’s not the card I want to be tapping out for on turn 3, especially since they can instant speed equip plating after blockers are declared.

That said, I don’t think staying instant-only is in the best interest right now. I firmly believe Search is the strongest late-game card in Blue right now, not playing it because your opponent could have a 1-2 of land destruction ability is like the “dies to bolt” argument of old

You have to play some threat density, and if Jeskai is killing Search then you’ve already gotten value from at least one scry, you get a basic out of it, and your colonnade has one fewer answer to worry about.

Regarding the current build: I don’t want Think Twice in my deck in this meta, many of the decks we are scared to tap out Against can “win” at instant speed anyway (Coco/chord, gifts, Ad Nauseum, burn).

Other decks I’d rather have the interaction than the card draw. I think Serum is right for the deck now after testing a couple dozen matches with it directly over Think Twice. Blasting it off t1 isn’t usually correct for us, we need to see how the game develops, but overall I think it’s where we want to be in conjunction with Search.

I agree that fatal push is one of the biggest draws to playing Esper. 4-3-3 is my Path-Push-Verdict split, I consider the 2 Blessed Alliance to be flex slots. I also play 2 negate as flex slots, but that’s because company, storm and LotV decks are abundant in the LGS I play Esper at.

I think Esper is favored against Jeskai, so if Jeskai continues drawing players I think it would be a strong decision.

I was watching a stream the other day, he played against cruel grixis piloted by MrCafouillette (sp?) and got rofl stomped handily (he was on RG Tron). Maybe that’s the direction we need to go, 1-4-1 resources until we can resolve a game-ending spell like Cruel Ultimatum. Maybe we jam Karn or Ugin in. I played Karn in the UB Nephalia’s Drownyard deck back in standard, it was a great way to cleanup. Ugin could be better than a sphinx rev. Who knows 😀

@Cipher: I was there playing, Burn wasn’t all that prevalent. Lot of TitanShift in the early rounds, I played 4 Jeskai opponents in 9 rounds, played Affinity twice, tons of Deaths Shadow (Good MU for Jeskai) of the ~9 people I was there with we found it was a mostly skewed meta towards those decks.

Lantern wasn’t out in force, Eldrazi Tron was lackluster, Dredge had a good showing, very few storm decks that I saw, not a ton of GW Company but scatterings, et al.

Burn wasn’t anywhere in the top tables that I could see

@Annihilator: that’s what I was referring to also, MB Queller and Settle. Although I’d cut 2 Think twice and go up to full 4 Snap, you’ll be playing a more aggressive game I’d think.