@ venom
I don't really like Griz because by the time i rites I may not be able to pay seven life to draw cards and he offers no protection for himself. I'm a big fan of sphinx of the steel wind if there's a lot of jund and gb/rock as most can't deal it, especially if you have any tokens out. (on a side note I've been running a hero's downfall in the board for bug rock and a friend who plays GB discard rock running it main and we've loved it, something to consider here, the card is really strong and deals with elspth chandra and ajani very well if they hit the field because we don't have a lot of answers to resolved non creature permanents -one of the reasons Storm/AdN combo is very tough- if people are I wouldn't run sphinx, too much of a liability but I don't think most are and i could see running it in the board here as it's a strong card in general and good snap target as well).
I think I alluded to this earlier, but I don't think sweepers are in a great place in modern right now (anger excluded) for this deck. Elesh norn typically get its done and provides a great threat with the tokens and the decks that it really hurts aren't that great to begin with, zoo and other creature aggro. Again a meta call but I think where I play and from what I can similar to online, most fields are full of pod twin and affinity and they're only good against the latter but affinity usually isn't a problem and occasionally good against pod if they have mana dorks and voice but pretty bad if finks and redcap are out.
just some thoughts. on the flip side, if people are playing jund and fish, your list looks like it should crush them. I guess just be aware of the meta and tune accordingly. I think that might be the greatest strength of the deck it can take all shapes and was a wide selection of cards to pull from to beat the stuffings out of whatever you expect to face.
hope that helps a bit, any questions just let me know, I've played the full on control shell with lots of sweepers counters and sphinx's rev to the attrition one I'm on now and I love talking about the deck because it's awesome.
good luck with you build and if you can find cryptic, run it, it's awesome
Yeah I agree on Grizz and I actually have Sphinx in the SB in case i run into a bunch of RG silliness. The LGS I play at has a ton of aggro, be it silly-ass homebrews or affinity and fish, so I need the sweepers MB for sure. If I run into Combo/Control they are pretty dead draws but that's what the SB is for.
Overall I am liking the deck a lot and think I have found a happy balance between discard/counters/removal. I dropped Sphinx's Rev for a 4 th Mana Leak which I think will be better. I frankly never wanted Sphinx in my hand, it was almost always a dead draw for me.
This week I will be trying UW Tron out and giving this one a brief break. I like UW Tron's end game and frankly was wishing for Emrakul a few times last Friday to finish things off a bit quicker.
Oh and people hate Iona, and explaining what she does to people who have never seen her before is both funny and sad (the last kid I played was running mono red (it was an awful deck) and I almost felt bad playing Iona, but I wanted the win).
Question: Can you Esper Charm off non basic lands in response to blood moon? I figure you can not because you have to let the spell resolve (thus your lands becoming mountains) to Esper Charm it, correct?
Question: Can you Esper Charm off non basic lands in response to blood moon? I figure you can not because you have to let the spell resolve (thus your lands becoming mountains) to Esper Charm it, correct?
You can tap the lands for mana in response to them casting Blood Moon and then cast Esper Charm off of the floating mana after Blood Moon resolves.
I dunno. Gifts/fetch for basics is fine, but you don't just want to be able to cast some of your spells under Blood Moon, you want to able to cast Cryptic, Snapcaster + Cryptic, yada yada.
And that is what versatile cards like Celestial Purge and Disenchant that are good in multiple matchups are for.
+1 on having to account for blood moon. Outside of blue moon and big (skred) red which had it main, you should be prepared for it coming out of the board. If you run a more tron/signet based configuration it helps alot but since the 2 blue fetches you want are in onslaught reliably fetching islands before blood moon comes down (required for giftsing for more basics) can be very challenging and you can't esper charm a t3 moon on the draw and if you don't have leak you're sunk. just be warned it's a you lose the game effect for this deck.
just be warned it's a you lose the game effect for this deck.
I agree. It's the single biggest hate card you can see for the deck. Even worse than rest in peace because blood moon turns off your man lands which is your alternate win con.
I really like the Chromatic lantern idea. I want to try it. At worse it's an overpriced mana rock. Slow but still welcome in a deck like this. At best it hoses our worst hate card. It can also be cast post blood moon since it's an artifact.
And if you need any more convincing to try it out, remember that affinity is more than capable of a turn 2 blood moon.
I've upped the lands to 26. I feel like missing land drops happened slightly too frequently with 25 lands.
Also dropped a snappy because I felt like I drew them too much early on with nothing in the graveyard. They are great in gifts packages, but I'm not playing green so if I gifts I'm probably trying to double entomb for a win. There are still two however should I need to include one to get something I need with gifts like board wipe or removal.
Ok so I had an epiphany at work. Dropped the restoration angel since it won't save Iona. That alone I think would have made it worth it vs. decks with 2 color removal (ie black white). Too bad Iona is an angel.
I chose to replace RA with Brimaz. He passes the bolt test, makes stuff for Elesh to pump and just seems all around efficient and tough to deal with.
Also I'm trying to shift away from blue except for mana leak and gifts. Nothing drastic but I ended up ditching both thirst for knowledge and adding Elspeth.
Venomous72 was right. Lingering souls are the star of this deck. Super efficient, evasive, good with Lilly, Elspeth, gifts, and finally Elesh. There is hardly a drawback for mainboarding 4. I rarely wanted to side them out.
I did 4 rounds. I went 2-0 vs. BW Tokens. The next matchup was UWR Geist. That matchup was hard though game 1 felt winnable despite the loss. Game two was unfortunate as I only got 3 lands :/
The third matchup was like a tempo goyf twin deck. That matchup actually felt good despite the losses. My epic bad luck continued as i didn't draw a gifts or board wipe. I was very prepared for the combo though, and didn't fall to that.
The final round was vs. Affinity. Game 1 was really close but a loss. Game two, never drew my sideboard stuff and got mana screwed yet again. Really considering that 26th land. Talked myself out of it some how between this post and the last.
All and all this deck looked pretty good. I look forward to more testing in 2 weeks at the next modern event.
I think is geist is way better main than brimaz spellskite and maybe finks, unless you're expecting a lot of zoo. it's bad against affinity and twin and mediocre against pod but the first 2 are just not getting you anywhere unless youre already winning, alot. you only get to play 4 gifts so statistically you won't see it more often than not with consistencty before turn 8 or 5 off thirst which ends up being 6 and really not that good. spellskite is a powerful tool and really good against a number of decks but just useless against some it's a prototypical board card. i'd recommend geist more counter and/or more draw. cryptic really is an allstar in the deck but if you can't run it running other flexible spells would be good. not sure what the best are maybe esper charm. think twice is much worse but not terrible and has strong synergy with lil which is important especially if you run 4. I built an esper tempo deck with deathrite -> t2 lil or geist and then elspeth and that was pretty much good night to everything. a more true solar flare/ walkers build could be very strong with gideon tamiyo and elspeth to follow up lil's disruption. the first 2 are expensive so a few mana rocks to accel could be good and build some resiliency against blood moon. that could be alot of fun?
in short, think what you want to do and think how each card contributes. geist swings for 10 off elesh norn and 9 off elspeth in the air which can end games quickly attacks that kill gideon are fine because if they could've they would have swung at you and they didnt so that's good. If you can not die for a turn tamiyo locks up most combos outside of storm.. swordsing up token is mana intensive but can lead to devestating effects, feast famine/fire ice connecting is usually good night and so is untapping with multiple walkers on the field
This is only a 3 color deck, i don't understand how Blood Moon hoses you so hard(unless it resolves t2 on the play against you) Why don't you just fetch for basics? Doesn't this deck play talismans also? and why on earth would you want to run 26 lands? I really don't understand. You're literally not casting anything over 4 mana.
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Fetching basics is not easy because there are a lot of colored mana requirements here. If you spend your first three turns fetching one Island, one Swamp, and one Plains (not considering how unlikely that would be), then you're not able to cast a Wrath, Liliana, Brimaz, Finks, etc. You're not going to see the right combination of fetch lands every time, and unless you're positive the Blood Moon is coming then it's probably more valuable to get whatever lands can cast what's in your hand.
There's a high land count because you absolutely have to hit your first 4-5 land drops on time, and there is no card draw to help you find more. The individual spells may top out at four mana, but if you can only get off one spell a turn then you can get behind very quickly. There's also Snapcaster to consider - there will definitely be games where you want to get to six mana so you can Snap-Gifts or even Snap-Wrath.
Huh? I never said Blood Moon wasn't good against this deck, i just didn't understand why it's so good against this deck. Thanks for the great explanations though. It definitely makes sense now that i know what's up.
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I went 2-3 on Monday with this list beating Tarmo Twin and Affinity, losing to Blue Moon, UR Delver and Melira Pod. It was my first time playing the deck.
Delver walked all over me and Blood Moon was lights out.
I don't have an Iona so I used Inkwell Leviathan instead. It's an unanswerable 3 turn clock against a lot of decks.
I'd like to get this thread discussion going again, since it seems that the 4C gifts thread has moved to a more aggressive strat using tarm with the gifts pack being a late game plan.
This version of the deck plays more control-ish using the gifts/rites package as a win-con (either with a perfect opening hand or by controling the board and then winning).
So anyone still playing this version? anyone from the 4C gifts plan thinking about moving towards a more controlling shell?
I just played last night, losing three matches in a row to mono-red burn, R/B burn, and Zoo. All the games were very close, I felt like with just another turn I could have stabilized. The mono-red burn player had perfect draws; he even killed me through Iona in one game. I think another Timely Reinforcements in the board may be necessary - it would have likely won me a couple of those games if I had ever drawn it.
I had considered a 1-of Pack Rat when I was building my deck. At first I had been building around Sun Titan more, so I wanted to do some work with that - discard something to make a Rat, and if the Rats get dealt with then Titan can get back the stuff I pitched. I never considered running all four, but I'm interested in how it turns out.
Personally, I feel like the land base is too painful to run Thoughtseize main deck. I've been wanting to fit a few into the sideboard, I'm just waiting to get some more testing in with my board so I know which cards I want to keep and which can go.
Yeah, new Jace is pretty bad. There are much better ways to filter draws/put cards in the graveyard. Bouncing a permanent at sorcery speed isn't a big deal, especially considering most things can be replayed for just one or two mana. The ultimate is pretty crazy, but that can't be your main reason for running a planeswalker because it almost never goes off.
I've been meaning to try out a Jace Beleren in place of one Liliana, actually. The extra card draw would be really nice, and I run Sun Titan. Only problem is I seem to have lost my copy.
I'm running pack rat in a 4c list and like it, I started as a 2x, but could understand 4 if you ran 4 lingering souls and elesh and iona main (typically uncastable). I actually think the card fits, but rather as a singleton. Its better to be able to not lean on it and only have to play it when it excels. It will run away with some games like against jund where they have to throw everything at it to remove it, but its sad against combo where you have to race.
What are people doing with the resto angels? I feel like two finks is obvious, but two blade splicers could really smooth out some rough aggro matchups.
My personal advise is to also skip out on inkwell leviathans, its a three turn clock but comes down at best turn 5 skip it, I know everyone owns them because they are a cheap good foil fattie. Maybe empyrial archangel which has some neat utility.
I don't really like Griz because by the time i rites I may not be able to pay seven life to draw cards and he offers no protection for himself. I'm a big fan of sphinx of the steel wind if there's a lot of jund and gb/rock as most can't deal it, especially if you have any tokens out. (on a side note I've been running a hero's downfall in the board for bug rock and a friend who plays GB discard rock running it main and we've loved it, something to consider here, the card is really strong and deals with elspth chandra and ajani very well if they hit the field because we don't have a lot of answers to resolved non creature permanents -one of the reasons Storm/AdN combo is very tough- if people are I wouldn't run sphinx, too much of a liability but I don't think most are and i could see running it in the board here as it's a strong card in general and good snap target as well).
I think I alluded to this earlier, but I don't think sweepers are in a great place in modern right now (anger excluded) for this deck. Elesh norn typically get its done and provides a great threat with the tokens and the decks that it really hurts aren't that great to begin with, zoo and other creature aggro. Again a meta call but I think where I play and from what I can similar to online, most fields are full of pod twin and affinity and they're only good against the latter but affinity usually isn't a problem and occasionally good against pod if they have mana dorks and voice but pretty bad if finks and redcap are out.
just some thoughts. on the flip side, if people are playing jund and fish, your list looks like it should crush them. I guess just be aware of the meta and tune accordingly. I think that might be the greatest strength of the deck it can take all shapes and was a wide selection of cards to pull from to beat the stuffings out of whatever you expect to face.
hope that helps a bit, any questions just let me know, I've played the full on control shell with lots of sweepers counters and sphinx's rev to the attrition one I'm on now and I love talking about the deck because it's awesome.
good luck with you build and if you can find cryptic, run it, it's awesome
Yeah I agree on Grizz and I actually have Sphinx in the SB in case i run into a bunch of RG silliness. The LGS I play at has a ton of aggro, be it silly-ass homebrews or affinity and fish, so I need the sweepers MB for sure. If I run into Combo/Control they are pretty dead draws but that's what the SB is for.
Overall I am liking the deck a lot and think I have found a happy balance between discard/counters/removal. I dropped Sphinx's Rev for a 4 th Mana Leak which I think will be better. I frankly never wanted Sphinx in my hand, it was almost always a dead draw for me.
This week I will be trying UW Tron out and giving this one a brief break. I like UW Tron's end game and frankly was wishing for Emrakul a few times last Friday to finish things off a bit quicker.
Oh and people hate Iona, and explaining what she does to people who have never seen her before is both funny and sad (the last kid I played was running mono red (it was an awful deck) and I almost felt bad playing Iona, but I wanted the win).
Question: Can you Esper Charm off non basic lands in response to blood moon? I figure you can not because you have to let the spell resolve (thus your lands becoming mountains) to Esper Charm it, correct?
You can tap the lands for mana in response to them casting Blood Moon and then cast Esper Charm off of the floating mana after Blood Moon resolves.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Chromatic Lantern seems like overkill.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
And that is what versatile cards like Celestial Purge and Disenchant that are good in multiple matchups are for.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
I agree. It's the single biggest hate card you can see for the deck. Even worse than rest in peace because blood moon turns off your man lands which is your alternate win con.
I really like the Chromatic lantern idea. I want to try it. At worse it's an overpriced mana rock. Slow but still welcome in a deck like this. At best it hoses our worst hate card. It can also be cast post blood moon since it's an artifact.
And if you need any more convincing to try it out, remember that affinity is more than capable of a turn 2 blood moon.
I don't like having a card I autolose to. It sucks. Lantern could help.
4x Marsh Flats
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Celestial Colonnade
3x Godless Shrine
2x Watery Grave
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x City of Brass
1x Island
2x Plains
2x Swamp
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Tectonic Edge
Creatures
2x Spellskite
2x Snapcaster Mage
3x Kitchen Finks
1x Restoration Angel
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria
1x Slaughter Pact
3x Path to Exile
1x Doom Blade
3x Mana Leak
2x Thirst For Knowledge
4x Gifts Ungiven
Sorceries
3x Lingering Souls
1x Wrath of God
1x Supreme Verdict
1x Day of Judgment
1x Unburial Rites
Planeswalkers
3x Liliana of the Veil
1x Sphinx of the Steel Wind
3x Leyline of Sanctity
3x Stony Silence
2x Celestial Purge
2x Disenchant
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Chromatic Lantern
1x Timely Reinforcements
I've upped the lands to 26. I feel like missing land drops happened slightly too frequently with 25 lands.
Also dropped a snappy because I felt like I drew them too much early on with nothing in the graveyard. They are great in gifts packages, but I'm not playing green so if I gifts I'm probably trying to double entomb for a win. There are still two however should I need to include one to get something I need with gifts like board wipe or removal.
I chose to replace RA with Brimaz. He passes the bolt test, makes stuff for Elesh to pump and just seems all around efficient and tough to deal with.
Also I'm trying to shift away from blue except for mana leak and gifts. Nothing drastic but I ended up ditching both thirst for knowledge and adding Elspeth.
Here's what I ended up using:
4x Marsh Flats
4x Verdant Catacombs
4x Celestial Colonnade
3x Godless Shrine
2x Watery Grave
1x Hallowed Fountain
1x Island
2x Plains
2x Swamp
1x Ghost Quarter
1x Tectonic Edge
Creatures
2x Spellskite
2x Snapcaster Mage
3x Kitchen Finks
1x Brimaz, King of Oreskos
1x Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1x Iona, Shield of Emeria
1x Slaughter Pact
3x Path to Exile
1x Go for the Throat
4x Mana Leak
4x Gifts Ungiven
Sorceries
4x Lingering Souls
1x Wrath of God
1x Supreme Verdict
1x Day of Judgment
1x Unburial Rites
Planeswalkers
3x Liliana of the Veil
1x Elspeth, Knight-Errant
1x Sphinx of the Steel Wind
3x Leyline of Sanctity
3x Stony Silence
2x Celestial Purge
2x Disenchant
1x Engineered Explosives
1x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Chromatic Lantern
1x Timely Reinforcements
Venomous72 was right. Lingering souls are the star of this deck. Super efficient, evasive, good with Lilly, Elspeth, gifts, and finally Elesh. There is hardly a drawback for mainboarding 4. I rarely wanted to side them out.
I did 4 rounds. I went 2-0 vs. BW Tokens. The next matchup was UWR Geist. That matchup was hard though game 1 felt winnable despite the loss. Game two was unfortunate as I only got 3 lands :/
The third matchup was like a tempo goyf twin deck. That matchup actually felt good despite the losses. My epic bad luck continued as i didn't draw a gifts or board wipe. I was very prepared for the combo though, and didn't fall to that.
The final round was vs. Affinity. Game 1 was really close but a loss. Game two, never drew my sideboard stuff and got mana screwed yet again. Really considering that 26th land. Talked myself out of it some how between this post and the last.
All and all this deck looked pretty good. I look forward to more testing in 2 weeks at the next modern event.
in short, think what you want to do and think how each card contributes. geist swings for 10 off elesh norn and 9 off elspeth in the air which can end games quickly attacks that kill gideon are fine because if they could've they would have swung at you and they didnt so that's good. If you can not die for a turn tamiyo locks up most combos outside of storm.. swordsing up token is mana intensive but can lead to devestating effects, feast famine/fire ice connecting is usually good night and so is untapping with multiple walkers on the field
There's a high land count because you absolutely have to hit your first 4-5 land drops on time, and there is no card draw to help you find more. The individual spells may top out at four mana, but if you can only get off one spell a turn then you can get behind very quickly. There's also Snapcaster to consider - there will definitely be games where you want to get to six mana so you can Snap-Gifts or even Snap-Wrath.
Huh? I never said Blood Moon wasn't good against this deck, i just didn't understand why it's so good against this deck. Thanks for the great explanations though. It definitely makes sense now that i know what's up.
Delver walked all over me and Blood Moon was lights out.
I don't have an Iona so I used Inkwell Leviathan instead. It's an unanswerable 3 turn clock against a lot of decks.
The first change is to take out the Teachings and Mannequin and replace them with Lingering Souls.
I liked having 2 Unburial Rites because Elesh Norn did get killed in a couple games.
I'd like to get this thread discussion going again, since it seems that the 4C gifts thread has moved to a more aggressive strat using tarm with the gifts pack being a late game plan.
This version of the deck plays more control-ish using the gifts/rites package as a win-con (either with a perfect opening hand or by controling the board and then winning).
So anyone still playing this version? anyone from the 4C gifts plan thinking about moving towards a more controlling shell?
2 Wall of Omens
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Snapcaster Mage
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Iona, Shield of Emeria
1 Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite
1 Sun Titan
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Detention Sphere
1 Oblivion Ring
3 Lingering Souls
3 Gifts Ungiven
2 Path to Exile
1 Dismember
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Wrath of God
2 Cryptic Command
3 Mana Leak
1 Esper Charm
1 Unburial Rites
2 Scalding Tarn
2 Misty Rainforest
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Watery Grave
1 Godless Shrine
2 Celestial Colonnade
1 Creeping Tar Pit
1 Sunken Ruins
1 Mystic Gate
1 Temple of Deceit
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Tectonic Edge
2 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Sin Collector
1 Vendilion Clique
1 Phyrexian Crusader
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
1 Spellskite
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Damnation
1 Path to Exile
1 Slaughter Pact
1 Timely Reinforcements
1 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Chromatic Lantern
1 Venser, the Sojourner
2 Stony Silence
I just played last night, losing three matches in a row to mono-red burn, R/B burn, and Zoo. All the games were very close, I felt like with just another turn I could have stabilized. The mono-red burn player had perfect draws; he even killed me through Iona in one game. I think another Timely Reinforcements in the board may be necessary - it would have likely won me a couple of those games if I had ever drawn it.
Personally, I feel like the land base is too painful to run Thoughtseize main deck. I've been wanting to fit a few into the sideboard, I'm just waiting to get some more testing in with my board so I know which cards I want to keep and which can go.
UBRKess, Dissident MageUBR - Controlling Dissidents
GRhonas the IndomitableG - Indomitable Four Drops
WUBOloro, Ageless AsceticWUB - Loot & Renanimate
What are people doing with the resto angels? I feel like two finks is obvious, but two blade splicers could really smooth out some rough aggro matchups.
My personal advise is to also skip out on inkwell leviathans, its a three turn clock but comes down at best turn 5 skip it, I know everyone owns them because they are a cheap good foil fattie. Maybe empyrial archangel which has some neat utility.