Nissa's Oath is so underwhelming and at 2 mana feels like a bad play. Something like Mirri's Guile at 1 would be fantastic, for example.
Sylvan Library (which absolutely won't happen).
Or some kind of DRS efficient threat. All I know is throwing more removal isn't what needs to be done. We have absolutely nothing to ensure flooding. Meanwhile, decks are getting leaner, running less lands, cantripping, or outright winning so quickly. Fair decks need some unfair element added to the mix.
I predict these lands being weaponized more against us than being beneficial. I'm happy for modern as a whole but as a midrange player I'm selfishly upset about linear decks having access to this.
IF this slides in I imagine it would replace the blooming marsh.
Overall, this is like the equivalent of being excited that fatal push was printed when decks used to have trade tempo for our Goyfs.
Horizon has looked very poor for midrange. Luckily it's still early in the spoiler season.
We need card filtering/efficient threats, not more answers.
All the grave hate makes me want to say to avoid Grimflayer.
You could go a 4th Bob.
I'm not entirely sure what other creature is worth plugging in at the moment.
I'm accepting rock but it doesn't give me the same thrill as Jund. Casting BBE is so exciting and gives me that gambler addiction high. It's like, "It might be a boat!" whenever I cascade off of her.
I keep trying SO hard to become good with grixis shadow, and I've put reps into it---and I still can't do well with it outside of an FNM. The deck's so punishing. Jund Shadow is a poor choice with the abundance of grave hate and surgicals running around.
I seem to just be incompetent with heavy cantrip decks, man.
Oh, did you play in the IQ at the Comic Book Store yesterday? I've hardly ever seen big mana there, which has always been surprising. I guess enough people figured out how fair the store was and decided to capitalize on it.
What was your 75? And did you play against "normal" Affinity or Hardened Scales?
Yup, this was at the Comic Book Store. It was PACKED with Tron, and Titan decks. I lost game 1 to regular old Affinity. My opener mulled to 6 with a reasonable but not very interactive game with Affinity. I kept a reasonable 6 in the dark. Game 2 he mulled to 5 but his 5 and the draws were fantastic.
Infect blew me out, too
Outside of those two opponents, I felt very in control in my other matchups. They were stressful but always felt just in grasp of my control.
I'm gonna play Rock at my FNM tonight but I wanna play Jund over it. The only reason why I'm not is because I didn't have the time to switch up my deck before work; I go from work straight to the fnm in Philly.
Tireless Tracker is great in slower matchups, but she was just such a non-factor. I was either racing way too much to afford cracking her or was in positions were I couldn't really tap out to get clues. I didn't cast Kalitas once in the entire game, either. It was basically all Goyf, man-lands and a little Bob. The rest of the threats were irrelevant.
Welp, I was so close to getting top 8 in yesterday's IQ. I did much better than I thought, I've had so little time to playing this game in the past 8 months. I honestly thought I was going to just go home after my first game, especially with what I got paired up against for game 2. I was over prepared for graveyard decks, outside of Phoenix there were practically none. There were a TON of land decks, though. Only a handful of fair decks. Last time I went to the store it was the total opposite experience.
Squeaked into top 16 for 50 in store credit. The store was crowded and I filled up the last 2 spots in the tournament. Rock is pretty solid. I definitely still miss Jund but Field of Ruins was significant, as was the man-lands.
Affinity: Lost
Titanshift: Won
Grixis Shadow: Won
AD Nausuem: Won
Infect: Lost
8-Rack: Won
Affinity straight up crushed me, man. Infect...I had to mull since being on the draw with a Bob, Tireless Tracker and LOTV didn't sound appealing against infect. His game 2 hand was insane, too. He was drawing nothing but threats. I also really messed up using Field of Ruins and having my opponent blossom it. Basically blew my own land up.
This deck felt so unfair against Grixis Shadow. Game 2 I had 3x Pushes, 1x Pulse and 1x LOTV. Like----what do you do as a shadow player? Considering how amazing my hand was my shadow opponent definitely outplayed me with nearly digging himself out, but my deck just honestly auto-piloted beat him.
The rest of the wins were pretty standard fair. Tireless Tracker actually did almost nothing in the entire tournament, too slow. She was certainly snagged or killed a lot. Goyf and man-lands did almost all the work in the entire tournament. Scooze was a 2/2 bear this entire tournament.
This store is in Jersey and is not my store so preparing for an mtgo meta seemed appropriate. I'm thankful I didn't completely fall flat on my face considering my rust and how poorly suited my 75 was to this store and still having a good shot at top 8 in a nice sized IQ.
The deck I used was the one I posted on here last time.
I had to mulligan against every opponent this entire tournament, which was frustrating. Too much land or, more usually, 1 landers.
I've been wondering----why are we still running the 1x pulse when most of us are running 3 to 4 trophies? We have so many clunky 3 and 4 drops---do we really need another? I've been wondering if just replacing it with a Decay is better.
Also, do you guys like 4x Bobs and 2x Trackers, or 3x Bobs and 3x Trackers?
You're not on Jund Shadow, Defish? Meta too hostile?
Yeah, Trophy was way more exciting in theory. My first games with it ever I felt more like, "ewww, I didn't like doing that" more than "yeah, it kills everything!"
2x feels like a nice number in most decks that want it, 3 is bearable. 4x for any deck feels awful.
I'm sad the meta calls for playing 2x main deck baubles being very reasonable in this meta.
So, I couldn't help but feel that right now, playing a midrange deck with 24 to 25 lands feels rough to play in general. I've been trying to jam 4C/Grixis Shadow.
BBE feels, like others said, so awful to cast when you're being swarmed with creatures. BBE felt super, super good when first unbanned because so many people wanted to play Jace.
I feel like it's going to take something back breaking like
Turn 1 Shaman into Turn 2 LOTV
or
Turn 2 Shaman into Turn 3 BBE
to really start keeping up with modern.
Obviously Shaman has no chance being unbanned, as it's too powerful even for legacy.
I'm still keeping a close eye on GBx discussions but right now I think part of the problem is that we don't know where we stand. We're too low to to the ground to do well against control/ramp, and too slow to keep up with aggro/tribal decks---too stretched thin to deal with these graveyard decks.
It is looking like Rock is looking better than Jund at the moment.
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Sylvan Library (which absolutely won't happen).
Or some kind of DRS efficient threat. All I know is throwing more removal isn't what needs to be done. We have absolutely nothing to ensure flooding. Meanwhile, decks are getting leaner, running less lands, cantripping, or outright winning so quickly. Fair decks need some unfair element added to the mix.
IF this slides in I imagine it would replace the blooming marsh.
Overall, this is like the equivalent of being excited that fatal push was printed when decks used to have trade tempo for our Goyfs.
Horizon has looked very poor for midrange. Luckily it's still early in the spoiler season.
We need card filtering/efficient threats, not more answers.
You could go a 4th Bob.
I'm not entirely sure what other creature is worth plugging in at the moment.
I'm accepting rock but it doesn't give me the same thrill as Jund. Casting BBE is so exciting and gives me that gambler addiction high. It's like, "It might be a boat!" whenever I cascade off of her.
I keep trying SO hard to become good with grixis shadow, and I've put reps into it---and I still can't do well with it outside of an FNM. The deck's so punishing. Jund Shadow is a poor choice with the abundance of grave hate and surgicals running around.
I seem to just be incompetent with heavy cantrip decks, man.
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Overgrown Tomb
4x Blooming Marsh
2x Hissing Quagmire
2x Treetop Village
4x Swamp
2x Forest
4x Field of Ruin
Creature (15)
3x Dark Confidant
3x Scavenging Ooze
4x Tarmogoyf
3x Tireless Tracker
2x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Thoughtseize
4x Fatal Push
3x Assassin's Trophy
2x Abrupt Decay
1x Collective Brutality
Planeswalker (4)
4x Liliana of the Veil
Other (1)
1x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Collective Bruality
1x Kitchen Finks
1x Damnation
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Creeping Corrosion
3x Fulminator Mage
1x Choke
2x Liliana, the Last Hope
Yup, this was at the Comic Book Store. It was PACKED with Tron, and Titan decks. I lost game 1 to regular old Affinity. My opener mulled to 6 with a reasonable but not very interactive game with Affinity. I kept a reasonable 6 in the dark. Game 2 he mulled to 5 but his 5 and the draws were fantastic.
Infect blew me out, too
Outside of those two opponents, I felt very in control in my other matchups. They were stressful but always felt just in grasp of my control.
I'm gonna play Rock at my FNM tonight but I wanna play Jund over it. The only reason why I'm not is because I didn't have the time to switch up my deck before work; I go from work straight to the fnm in Philly.
Tireless Tracker is great in slower matchups, but she was just such a non-factor. I was either racing way too much to afford cracking her or was in positions were I couldn't really tap out to get clues. I didn't cast Kalitas once in the entire game, either. It was basically all Goyf, man-lands and a little Bob. The rest of the threats were irrelevant.
Squeaked into top 16 for 50 in store credit. The store was crowded and I filled up the last 2 spots in the tournament. Rock is pretty solid. I definitely still miss Jund but Field of Ruins was significant, as was the man-lands.
Affinity: Lost
Titanshift: Won
Grixis Shadow: Won
AD Nausuem: Won
Infect: Lost
8-Rack: Won
Affinity straight up crushed me, man. Infect...I had to mull since being on the draw with a Bob, Tireless Tracker and LOTV didn't sound appealing against infect. His game 2 hand was insane, too. He was drawing nothing but threats. I also really messed up using Field of Ruins and having my opponent blossom it. Basically blew my own land up.
This deck felt so unfair against Grixis Shadow. Game 2 I had 3x Pushes, 1x Pulse and 1x LOTV. Like----what do you do as a shadow player? Considering how amazing my hand was my shadow opponent definitely outplayed me with nearly digging himself out, but my deck just honestly auto-piloted beat him.
The rest of the wins were pretty standard fair. Tireless Tracker actually did almost nothing in the entire tournament, too slow. She was certainly snagged or killed a lot. Goyf and man-lands did almost all the work in the entire tournament. Scooze was a 2/2 bear this entire tournament.
This store is in Jersey and is not my store so preparing for an mtgo meta seemed appropriate. I'm thankful I didn't completely fall flat on my face considering my rust and how poorly suited my 75 was to this store and still having a good shot at top 8 in a nice sized IQ.
The deck I used was the one I posted on here last time.
I had to mulligan against every opponent this entire tournament, which was frustrating. Too much land or, more usually, 1 landers.
I've been wondering----why are we still running the 1x pulse when most of us are running 3 to 4 trophies? We have so many clunky 3 and 4 drops---do we really need another? I've been wondering if just replacing it with a Decay is better.
Also, do you guys like 4x Bobs and 2x Trackers, or 3x Bobs and 3x Trackers?
You're not on Jund Shadow, Defish? Meta too hostile?
I've been thinking something like this
4x Verdant Catacombs
2x Overgrown Tomb
4x Blooming Marsh
2x Hissing Quagmire
2x Treetop Village
4x Swamp
2x Forest
4x Field of Ruin
Creature (15)
3x Dark Confidant
3x Scavenging Ooze
4x Tarmogoyf
3x Tireless Tracker
2x Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
3x Thoughtseize
4x Fatal Push
3x Assassin's Trophy
2x Abrupt Decay
1x Collective Brutality
Planeswalker (4)
4x Liliana of the Veil
Other (1)
1x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Grafdigger's Cage
1x Collective Bruality
1x Kitchen Finks
1x Damnation
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Creeping Corrosion
3x Fulminator Mage
1x Choke
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
1x Nissa, Vital Force
2x feels like a nice number in most decks that want it, 3 is bearable. 4x for any deck feels awful.
I'm sad the meta calls for playing 2x main deck baubles being very reasonable in this meta.
Personally, I don't love the rock decks that use 4x copies of Trophy.
BBE feels, like others said, so awful to cast when you're being swarmed with creatures. BBE felt super, super good when first unbanned because so many people wanted to play Jace.
I feel like it's going to take something back breaking like
Turn 1 Shaman into Turn 2 LOTV
or
Turn 2 Shaman into Turn 3 BBE
to really start keeping up with modern.
Obviously Shaman has no chance being unbanned, as it's too powerful even for legacy.
I'm still keeping a close eye on GBx discussions but right now I think part of the problem is that we don't know where we stand. We're too low to to the ground to do well against control/ramp, and too slow to keep up with aggro/tribal decks---too stretched thin to deal with these graveyard decks.
It is looking like Rock is looking better than Jund at the moment.