Has anyone experimented with Nexus of Fate? The ability to go truly infinite is a difference maker, but I'm waiting on the next set to put together something for testing.
I added one celestial purge because in my local area I have been running into a lot of Mardu and it helps get around some of their interaction (Liliana/etc) and also helps against blood moon. As much as I wanted to believe that early game blood moon wasn't relevant against a two color deck, I was wrong. Since I don't run a plains in the deck and don't want to I needed something to get rid of it.
I went down to two Dispel and put in a negate instead because I was finding that a lot of sorcery interaction was hurting me more than counter magic.. I have gotten really good against Jeskai/UW so I figured that the negate might help and so far it has been working
I think this deck really benefits from a single Ancestral Visions mainboard.. Jim Davis has mentioned his thoughts on the card in control decks and I think the same logic applies here.. The plus side is that whenever you cast it in this deck, it will pay off since we chain together turns.. so you don't NEED it on turn 1.
Last, I got rid of the Opt. After playing with them for a while now, I have come to the conclusion that they don't do enough.. And more often then not, you EOT Opt on your opponent's first turn and don't have the mana to cast the Miracle lol and to be honest I haven't really missed it.. I think the serum visions does the same but a lot better because you can set up a turn 3 Miracle
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[*]Last, I got rid of the Opt. After playing with them for a while now, I have come to the conclusion that they don't do enough.. And more often then not, you EOT Opt on your opponent's first turn and don't have the mana to cast the Miracle lol and to be honest I haven't really missed it.. I think the serum visions does the same but a lot better because you can set up a turn 3 Miracle
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i reckon Opt is mostly there for triggering the miracle on Terminus.
I wouldn't even touch the card, probably at all, if i wasn't running Terminus in the side. Without Terminus i'd just run a set of Remand or some other mix of cantripping value spells.
List tags are malformed.
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Modern: G Tron, Vannifar, Jund, Druid/Vizier combo, Humans, Eldrazi Stompy (Serum Powder), Amulet, Grishoalbrand, Breach Titan, Turns, Eternal Command, As Foretold Living End, Elves, Cheerios, RUG Scapeshift
Right? And even in running 3x Terminus sideboard, I realized I didn't really like the use of the card as much as in like a UW Miracles/Control build.
Honestly the only real reason you would need instant speed terminus shenanigans would be in like an Affinity or Infect matchup where you have to worry about their man lands but that is why I run two path mainboard..
Ancestral Vision though... that card is the nuts. love it lately haha
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... If I responded to the Mage with Snap->Truth on some beaters, I could stay alive for a turn, but would then have two draws to find exactly my other Truth to bounce the Teeg and then go off. My other line was to let the Mage resolve, hope he named Truth instead of Gigadrowse, and then Gigadrowse his board down, giving me a better chance to topdeck one of my other three Gigadrowses to stay alive. (I had no other castable instants or sorceries in hand, so either way I wasn’t likely to flip Thing next turn). I went with what I think was the correct line—letting the Mage resolve—and the dude promptly named Gigadrowse. GG WP...
How about letting the Meddling Mage resolve, and playing Snapcaster Mage- Echoing Truth on Gaddock with Meddling Mage's ability on the stack? Would the blocking snap keep you alive? Would it even have to block? In desperation mode, you could always Gigadrowse for 1-2.
That's one or two chips off the ol'block of ice.
If he still names Gigadrowse, your Cryptic Command and any turn spells are now castable. Next turn is probably Cryptic to tap his team and bounce the Mage that says Gigadrowse, then play GD to transform Thing in the Ice FTW. If he names Cryptic and you kept Gigadrowse, you still just need one more spell to do the flippy thing.
I dont believe you get to respond to Meddling Mage like that. Its not the same as Snaps in that it doesnt generate a trigger. Its the same reason you have to respond to the Vial activation, not when the card is played out of it.
@charlieguide
The problem is that the Meddling Mage ability isn't a trigger. It enters the battlefield with the card named already so they could have played around his threats and he wouldn't be able to respond.
That being said, I think the best line would have been letting it resolve - he names gigadrowse and then you the snap echo the Teeg and use snap as a blocker.. Probably, but humans is tough... That isn't to say he couldn't just follow his next turn by Kitesail or something
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@Grim Falyer
Congrats man on your first Starcity! I totally get what you mean about them being exhausting.. When I went to the one in Massachusetts recently my last match of the day was against Storm and I was just completely drained and made a million misplays lol.
I have another coming up in a week or two, and Im excited!
Thanks! Good luck in MA, let us know how you end up doing.
@everyone in regard to my Humans match...yep, Meddling Mage has some unusual templating which means it doesn’t have an EtB trigger: you either respond while he’s on the stack or forever hold your peace.
Don’t quote me on this because I didn’t take notes and my memory is hazy here, but I think I was dead on board even when blocking with Snap and Thing unless I hit beaters (not Teeg) with Truth. I could still certainly have Gigadrowsed in response to the Meddling Mage cast, but that seems to have been the line that gives me the least chance to topdeck my way into a flipped Thing, and gives my opponent the most information in terms of what to name with the Mage. Still, it was the safest line and possibly the one I should have taken, hoping to hit a couple Serums or whatever when I untap.
It’s matches like this where I miss my Boomerang. Just adding another differently-named bounce spell to the mix could certainly have dug me out. The splash colors also shine here, of course. But Humans in competent hands are just brutal in general for us, no matter how teched up you are.
Nothing cool from GRN for us so far as I saw. Selective Snare might have been interesting at instant speed, but lacking that it’s a hard pass.
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Hey I recently took a mono blue list of turns to a pptq and went 2-3-1 my list was
Lands 22 islands 1 inkmoth
Creatures 2 snapcasters 1 thing in the ice
Spells 4 time warp. 3 temporal mastery. 3 part the waterfall. 4 remand 3 cryptic command
4 gigadrowse 3 exhaustion 4 dictate of kruphix 2 howling mine 1 jtms 3 ancestral vision
Sideboard- 3 chalice of the void 3 titi 2 dispel 1 negate 1 ceramonious rejection 2 pithing needle
1 dismember 2 echoing truth
I played a prison tezz list first round. Game one went to him and took forever. He had one bridge in play and I had about 4 mine effects. Could not find a cryptic to bounce bridge till too late (all 3 were buried in my Last 15 cards).
Game 2 I landed a turn 2 thing and he whirs 2 ensnaring bridges back to back. Turn 5 eot echoing truths the bridges back, flip thing with a time walk on my turn and he never gets another turn. Game 3 we went to time
Match 2. Black white rats. His deck was not great but funny enough his rats were able to get fairly big against turns. I beat him pretty easily both games.
Match 3. BW eldrazi game 1 I controlled the board, allowing him to cast a couple matter reshapers and flash in back to back dictates. He then resolves a thought not seer which takes a turn spell. I the exhaustion him and play a mine. After that I remand a reality smasher then cryptic tap and draw. Once I hit 9 lands I start chaining turns and end the game shortly after.
Game 2- same as game one. I let him resolve matter reshaper and displacer. I believe I cast turn 2 titi this game and proceed to giga, exhaustion, remand any threats till I chain a couple turns and win.
Match 4 RW burn game 1 I am able to steal. I get a couple mines down and he gets me to 4 life. I then awaken a land with waterveil. I attack him down to 6 but I run out of turns. So I exhaust him with no counter back up. He plays one land and bolts me to 1 and I win next turn.
Game 2 I have a good hand but I miss my 4th land drop even with a mine and get run over.
Game 3. I keep a 1 lander with chalice and ancestral vision. Hit the second land drop on turn 3 and cast chalice but it's too late. He resolved 2 lava spikes and a lavamancer before that. He then Boris charms me to death while I have about 4 turn spells in hand.
Match 5 Humans Game 1. I am able to Gigs exhaust him while he only has a noble and 2 lands in play. I take a couple extra turns but I run out of gas. He then gets to untap with a full grip and I only draw lands. Couldn't find a mine effect.
Game 2 he has a nut draw of turn 1 aether vial. Turn 2 champion of parish into teeg. Turn 3 he plays a second parish followed by a freebooter and the 2 drop that puts a counter on everything. Turn 4 he plays another 2 drop that gives a counter to everything and hits me for 18 while I was at 15. So I had a slow hand and an exhaustion but I was planning on dropping a dictate at his eot so I could untap and then exhaustion and hopefully find an out to teeg as he shuts down out deck.
Match 6. UB mill. This matchup is horrible. I got crushed but I'm thinking that our only chance of winning is to resolve a titi and go from there. Can't let mesmeric orb hit the feild either.
This was my first run with the deck so I'm no expert but my impression so far is that we need more mine effects, the games where I was able to land a mine effect or 2 before turn 5 went in my favor as it allowed me use my exhastions and gigadrowse more liberally knowing I would be drawing 3 or 7 cards with ancestral.
I wasn't impressed with ancestral. Always felt too slow. A couple times it was nice to draw all those cards but most of the time I would rather have played serum visions. Visions also plays better with titi allowing us to flip him faster
Also can we replicate a gigadrowse if it's being cast via snap?
I found myself thinking that turn 3-4 can get awkward for us. Usually when we are faced with wanting to wait to eot dictate so we can untap and exhaustion or gigs but sometimes being forced to exhaustion so we don't die that turn. This being really hard if we don't have cryptic or the 4th land for cryptic to follow up, It also feels that some amount of filtering would be nice but I don't know how to squeeze it in because the good filter spells are all at 3 mana for blue. Jace felt ok. Never amazing but never bad Best plays were usually bouncing snaps back to hand to recast time warp. I liked the one titi main as it is a whole turn faster than awakened waterveil. Also my opponent would almost always be tapped down by the time I deployed him so removal was never an issue. I think I want the 4th exhaustion in the main. I love remand in the main. It plays very well with cryptic and it draws us cards which this deck needs badly.
I like mono blue for a couple reasons, it allows us to streamline the combo meaning when we are going off I don't have to worry about drawing removal or whatever else thus fizzling the combo. At the same time we do get those draws where we just don't have enough interaction early and get put in bad spots so the splash would be appreciated there,
So with all that being said, I know some matchup will always be bad (burn, mill, humans) but would going for more mine effects main be warranted? I see most of you have settled on 6 but the deck felt like it wanted to land one on turn 2 and 3 while using gigs to tap their lands rendering all the cards the draw useless.
Hey! Sounds like you had a good day with the deck though!
So couple things:
A) Yeah you can replicate with snapcaster mage! That's what makes it so awesome in the deck!
B) I agree about Ancestral Vision.. I just run 1x in the deck with 4x dictate, 2x howling mine, and 4x serum visions because I see it as a midrange game winner.. It shines in those matchups where you are being hit by thought seize and Liliana. And since I have a lot of Mardu Pyromancer at my LGS it seems to work nicely for me
C) I run 6 mine effects and it seems about right... I think if you want to improve the quality of your draws you could run Search for Azcanta in place of Jace possibly? I did for a while and really liked it. The reason I took it out was because I was constantly playing it wrong lol too frequently I would flip for the extra mana and get punished.. I was also using it in place of a Howling Mine because of the abundance of Kolghan's Command and other artifact removal during the initial KCI outburst haha
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Yeah I think next time I run this deck I will try it with 3 howling mine main and serum instead of ancestral. While the extra cards from ancestral were nice most of the time I was having to discard them after taking an extra turn. In a meta where I was playing lots of GBx decks I see ancestral playing more of a role main but in an open meta and the speed of some decks serum is where we need to be.
Like i said before it feels like filtering would be nice but the core list is so tight that we don't have much wiggle room. Baby jace actually does seem like a good fit though except he turns on removal and we have no way to recur him once he dies but being able to filter those hands where we draw the wrong parts of our deck too soon does seem appealing.
So what other decks do you guys run when not on turns? I currently have grixis shadow and I'm thinking about building infect.
Alright so I had my PPTQ today! My record was: 3-1-2
So a quick report of things,
First round: BYE
Second & Third Rounds: Were against UW Control and Hardened Scales Affinity.. both resulted in draws and were super frustrating.. I don't know if any of you have ran into this but a lot of times people will have difficulty interacting with your deck or be confused how to play their deck into your combo so they take ungodly long turns but then blame you in the end for going to time... With my matchup against the Hardened Scales he was taking up to 3 minutes resolving Ancient Stirrings despite his choices having no affect on me winning through time warp effects.. [END RANT] lol but yeah against that dude he called judge unnecessarily twice for things that the judge dismissed as nothing so when we went to turns I just did a small combo so he wouldn't have any turns before the draw lol (dirty magic, I know...)
Round 4: Sultai Control - won easily 2-0.. My first game I had the combo easily, and then my second game I played almost like UW Control but then ended up ultimating jace against him (without a Mine effect in play! which was insane) Total heart of the cards Yugi moment lol
Round 5: Against a friend who plays UW Control (2-0) - had a cool interaction in game one where he had detention sphered my Jace but I was able to cast cryptic to bounce it and then repeatedly Exhaustion him as I built card advantage with Jace and set up for like infinite Temporal Mastery Miracles haha
Round 6: Humans... AWFUL.. enough said lol
But honestly the power of Mantis Rider with exalt swinging for 4 in game one was insane.. and then game two I almost stabilized and started to combo but was left in this weird situation where I Terminus the board and exhaustion thinking I was safe but he was able to of course vial in the Mantis Rider to hit for lethal.
(If I had won this I would of cut to top 8)
So some random notes I learned:
I really like 4 Exhaustion, however I may start playing around with the rest of my early game interaction ie 2x Path, 2x Remand, 3x Gigadrowse, etc.. I was honestly contemplating removing the Path and just putting in two mainboard Terminus.. honestly it seems like at 2 it wouldn't really hinder non-creature matchups anyhow..
I think I was right in running the split of 2/2 Negate & Dispel.. It worked exactly as I thought it would. There wasn't too much control there despite me playing against UW twice but in those matchups, having the negate felt really good because I could fight counter battles but it also hit planeswalkers and D-Sphere
I may also attempt to make room for a second Jace.. honestly him resolving is just so game ending in this deck
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Hey I recently took a mono blue list of turns to a pptq and went 2-3-1 my list was...
This was my first run with the deck so I'm no expert but my impression so far is that we need more mine effects, the games where I was able to land a mine effect or 2 before turn 5 went in my favor as it allowed me use my exhastions and gigadrowse more liberally knowing I would be drawing 3 or 7 cards with ancestral.
I wasn't impressed with ancestral. Always felt too slow. A couple times it was nice to draw all those cards but most of the time I would rather have played serum visions. Visions also plays better with titi allowing us to flip him faster
Yep, that was my first thought when seeing your list. Serum is probably mandatory if you have 4 Thing in the 75.
It does feel horrible to burn through Gigadrowses and Exhaustions without one of these effects gaining you advantage, which is why Cryptic and Remand are such great pieces of interaction in this deck.
I found myself thinking that turn 3-4 can get awkward for us. Usually when we are faced with wanting to wait to eot dictate so we can untap and exhaustion or gigs but sometimes being forced to exhaustion so we don't die that turn. This being really hard if we don't have cryptic or the 4th land for cryptic to follow up, It also feels that some amount of filtering would be nice but I don't know how to squeeze it in because the good filter spells are all at 3 mana for blue. Jace felt ok. Never amazing but never bad Best plays were usually bouncing snaps back to hand to recast time warp. I liked the one titi main as it is a whole turn faster than awakened waterveil. Also my opponent would almost always be tapped down by the time I deployed him so removal was never an issue. I think I want the 4th exhaustion in the main. I love remand in the main. It plays very well with cryptic and it draws us cards which this deck needs badly.
I like mono blue for a couple reasons, it allows us to streamline the combo meaning when we are going off I don't have to worry about drawing removal or whatever else thus fizzling the combo. At the same time we do get those draws where we just don't have enough interaction early and get put in bad spots so the splash would be appreciated there,
So with all that being said, I know some matchup will always be bad (burn, mill, humans) but would going for more mine effects main be warranted? I see most of you have settled on 6 but the deck felt like it wanted to land one on turn 2 and 3 while using gigs to tap their lands rendering all the cards the draw useless.
The number and nature of mine effects is still kind of an open question (remember that Jace counts as one). I like 7 (4 Dictate, 2 Mine, 1 JtMS) + 1 Ancestral, but this is by no means set in stone. I do think the variety here is crucial, with JtMS serving as an alternate wincon, AV breaking the symmetry of 1-for-1s in heavily interactive matchups, Mine fitting most cleanly along the curve while being the most dangerous to actually resolve, and Dictate being the most elegant fit overall.
Yeah I think next time I run this deck I will try it with 3 howling mine main and serum instead of ancestral. While the extra cards from ancestral were nice most of the time I was having to discard them after taking an extra turn. In a meta where I was playing lots of GBx decks I see ancestral playing more of a role main but in an open meta and the speed of some decks serum is where we need to be.
Like i said before it feels like filtering would be nice but the core list is so tight that we don't have much wiggle room. Baby jace actually does seem like a good fit though except he turns on removal and we have no way to recur him once he dies but being able to filter those hands where we draw the wrong parts of our deck too soon does seem appealing.
So what other decks do you guys run when not on turns? I currently have grixis shadow and I'm thinking about building infect.
I'm not entirely convinced that we need more filtering than 4x Serum. We're a quantity over quality deck in terms of card draw, because 1) we have enough redundancy and flexibility in interaction that most pieces we'll find can keep us alive, and 2) we want to keep making our land drops all the way up to the 11th in a fair number of games.
When not on Turns, I'm playing BGx; usually Abzan, but lately straight Golgari. I'm sure the posters ITT will forgive me when I say I'll be taking fewer extra turns for a while after Assassin's Trophy is released. (For what its worth, the printing of Trophy probably incentivizes us more toward AV, both as a nod to the increased meta share of BGx and as a source of card advantage that can't be removed.)
Alright so I had my PPTQ today! My record was: 3-1-2
So a quick report of things,
First round: BYE
Second & Third Rounds: Were against UW Control and Hardened Scales Affinity.. both resulted in draws and were super frustrating.. I don't know if any of you have ran into this but a lot of times people will have difficulty interacting with your deck or be confused how to play their deck into your combo so they take ungodly long turns but then blame you in the end for going to time... With my matchup against the Hardened Scales he was taking up to 3 minutes resolving Ancient Stirrings despite his choices having no affect on me winning through time warp effects.. [END RANT] lol but yeah against that dude he called judge unnecessarily twice for things that the judge dismissed as nothing so when we went to turns I just did a small combo so he wouldn't have any turns before the draw lol (dirty magic, I know...)
Dude...don't hesitate to act in a situation like this. I'm a pretty friendly and lenient guy so far as tournament play goes, and even I would have politely asked him to make a decision about 45 seconds after Stirrings was cast, and after another 30s or so I would have called a judge. That is far, far too long of a time to take IMO.
Round 4: Sultai Control - won easily 2-0.. My first game I had the combo easily, and then my second game I played almost like UW Control but then ended up ultimating jace against him (without a Mine effect in play! which was insane) Total heart of the cards Yugi moment lol
Round 5: Against a friend who plays UW Control (2-0) - had a cool interaction in game one where he had detention sphered my Jace but I was able to cast cryptic to bounce it and then repeatedly Exhaustion him as I built card advantage with Jace and set up for like infinite Temporal Mastery Miracles haha
Round 6: Humans... AWFUL.. enough said lol
But honestly the power of Mantis Rider with exalt swinging for 4 in game one was insane.. and then game two I almost stabilized and started to combo but was left in this weird situation where I Terminus the board and exhaustion thinking I was safe but he was able to of course vial in the Mantis Rider to hit for lethal.
(If I had won this I would of cut to top 8)
So some random notes I learned:
I really like 4 Exhaustion, however I may start playing around with the rest of my early game interaction ie 2x Path, 2x Remand, 3x Gigadrowse, etc.. I was honestly contemplating removing the Path and just putting in two mainboard Terminus.. honestly it seems like at 2 it wouldn't really hinder non-creature matchups anyhow..
I think I was right in running the split of 2/2 Negate & Dispel.. It worked exactly as I thought it would. There wasn't too much control there despite me playing against UW twice but in those matchups, having the negate felt really good because I could fight counter battles but it also hit planeswalkers and D-Sphere
I may also attempt to make room for a second Jace.. honestly him resolving is just so game ending in this deck
Nice work overall! Unlucky on going to time twice and getting paired up against Humans in the deciding matchup. 2/2 Negate/Dispel does seem like a nice spread, but when I tested counter-heavy setups in general I found it easy to overboard on such effects; just something to keep in mind.
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I agree! Honestly the only times that both Negate and Dispel go in together is against UW and Jeskai Control
Other than that, the Negate are reserved for like Mardu Pyromancer and whatnot where Dispel was a poor sideboard choice
But yeah humans was dumb.. it stinks because Dictate and Howling Mine heavily favor them in terms of card advantage.. And they have 3 direct hate cards in (Sin Collector, Kitesail Freebooter, and Kambal if they chose to run it)
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Guys, kudos for keeping up a very intelligent and productive conversation. I've been curious about this deck for over a year, now, and giving it serious thought for a few months thanks in large part to the discussion here.
Here's what I've gleaned from the comments on this forum, and my own brainstorming. I'd really value your feedback.
1) I like the Mono-U version. We're not trying to control the board forever, just buy time until we "go off," and Blue is VERY good at delay tactics. When considering our life as a resource, I don't want to spend it on getting W sources.
2) I LOVE Thing in the Ice in this deck! At worst, it slows down the opponent's development when deployed early. If they Path to Exile it, it's like we just cast Rampant Growth and made them discard a card. Most often, it ends the game far more quickly than our other options.
4) Because Modern decks can usually win unopposed by turn 4 or earlier, I think we need to be able to count on two "disruptive" spells in our first four turns. Run the math, and you'll see if we have 16 of those spells, we have an 82% chance of drawing two of them by the time we've drawn 10 cards. Every additional disruption card in the deck adds about 3%. Every additional card we draw (or filter) adds 4%. The problem is, card draw spells only work if we draw and cast them, so when building the deck, cantrip spells like Remand count as about 1/4 of a card drawn. (Serum Visions, by my math, counts as a full card drawn due to the number of cards it exposes you to.)
In all my playtesting and two FNM's, I've beaten Humans (when they didn't draw many Kitesail Freebooters), Affinity, Scapeshift, Tron, E-Tron, UW Control, and some other brews. Favorite moments: 1) vs UW Control when the OP tapped out at the end of my turn and mumbled 'I don't think there's an instant turn spell' and I smiled and cast Nexus of Fate and never gave him another untap step. 2) vs E-Tron on Turn 5 after going to turns ... and taking ALL FIVE OF THEM!
I've lost, though, to Jeskai Pyromancer (I guess it's still a thing) Humans (when they draw lots of Kitesail Freebooters), Grixis Death's Shadow, and UG Emerge. I could attribute at least some of each loss to mana screw/flood, but the common thread was they all had very disruptive gameplans. I also imagine having trouble with the speed of Bogles and Infect, thus the sideboard choices.
I'm considering dropping the Boomerangs for a second Ancestral Vision and a Search for Azcanta.
So couple side notes @charlieguide; not sure if cost is a factor
But since you are running mono blue you can afford some leniency in your mana base.. I would recommend trying to run: Geier Reach Sanitarium, Mikokoro Center of the Sea, and Gemstone Caverns/Inkmoth Nexus possibly over time.. They all do a really good job at smoothing out areas in the deck while not digging into spots reserved for key spells
Also, I would probably cut a cryptic for another draw engine.. Ancestral Vision alone isn't reliable unless you are chaining turns since they will most likely outpace you.. I would recommend at least one Howling Mine.. even though im not a fan of it since it dies to SOOOO much artifact hate, it does do the job efficiently when it resolves and your opponent passes back even once. Plus cryptic is late game interaction honestly so running more than 2 in a deck like this throws off the curve
Other than that, everything looks right on! Glad our discussions have helped in a way! I honestly love this deck to the point where even losses are fun. Its just such a niche combo that people are never expecting and when you win you feel unbeatable. It reminds me of High Tide in legacy in that sense
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So couple side notes @charlieguide; not sure if cost is a factor
But since you are running mono blue you can afford some leniency in your mana base.. I would recommend trying to run: Geier Reach Sanitarium, Mikokoro Center of the Sea, and Gemstone Caverns/Inkmoth Nexus possibly over time.. They all do a really good job at smoothing out areas in the deck while not digging into spots reserved for key spells
Also, I would probably cut a cryptic for another draw engine.. Ancestral Vision alone isn't reliable unless you are chaining turns since they will most likely outpace you.. I would recommend at least one Howling Mine.. even though im not a fan of it since it dies to SOOOO much artifact hate, it does do the job efficiently when it resolves and your opponent passes back even once. Plus cryptic is late game interaction honestly so running more than 2 in a deck like this throws off the curve
Other than that, everything looks right on! Glad our discussions have helped in a way! I honestly love this deck to the point where even losses are fun. Its just such a niche combo that people are never expecting and when you win you feel unbeatable. It reminds me of High Tide in legacy in that sense
Thanks for the feedback.
No, budget is not a factor. I was trying to keep it a clean plan and not get too cute. I thought Part the Waterveil and Thing in the Ice made Inkmoth Nexus unnecessary, but you're the second person to mention it in as many days. I'll give it a shot. Gemstone Caverns and the draw-lands have been on my radar, too. That would mean cutting Radiant Fountains; what is your experience in the burn matchup? Can we afford not to have them, there?
I'm not sure I agree on cutting a Cryptic Command, though. I've relied on it heavily; Turn 4 is almost always either that or Gigadrowse.
Are you comfortable with the absence of Serum Visions?
Funny anecdote re: High Tide. Back in the late 90's when it was in Standard, I had a friend who loved running that deck. He once sat down next to a first-timer who had a huge deck of unsleeved cards. My friend went off and demonstrated the combo (Palinchron, I think?), then arbitrarily picked a number, "mill ... 100 cards." The kid started COUNTING OFF CARDS and when he got to 100, he looked at my friend and shrugged, because he STILL HAD 20 CARDS IN HIS DECK! My friend lost because he was unable to restart the combo!
So couple side notes @charlieguide; not sure if cost is a factor
But since you are running mono blue you can afford some leniency in your mana base.. I would recommend trying to run: Geier Reach Sanitarium, Mikokoro Center of the Sea, and Gemstone Caverns/Inkmoth Nexus possibly over time.. They all do a really good job at smoothing out areas in the deck while not digging into spots reserved for key spells
Also, I would probably cut a cryptic for another draw engine.. Ancestral Vision alone isn't reliable unless you are chaining turns since they will most likely outpace you.. I would recommend at least one Howling Mine.. even though im not a fan of it since it dies to SOOOO much artifact hate, it does do the job efficiently when it resolves and your opponent passes back even once. Plus cryptic is late game interaction honestly so running more than 2 in a deck like this throws off the curve
Other than that, everything looks right on! Glad our discussions have helped in a way! I honestly love this deck to the point where even losses are fun. Its just such a niche combo that people are never expecting and when you win you feel unbeatable. It reminds me of High Tide in legacy in that sense
Thanks for the feedback.
No, budget is not a factor. I was trying to keep it a clean plan and not get too cute. I thought Part the Waterveil and Thing in the Ice made Inkmoth Nexus unnecessary, but you're the second person to mention it in as many days. I'll give it a shot. Gemstone Caverns and the draw-lands have been on my radar, too. That would mean cutting Radiant Fountains; what is your experience in the burn matchup? Can we afford not to have them, there?
I'm not sure I agree on cutting a Cryptic Command, though. I've relied on it heavily; Turn 4 is almost always either that or Gigadrowse.
Are you comfortable with the absence of Serum Visions?
Funny anecdote re: High Tide. Back in the late 90's when it was in Standard, I had a friend who loved running that deck. He once sat down next to a first-timer who had a huge deck of unsleeved cards. My friend went off and demonstrated the combo (Palinchron, I think?), then arbitrarily picked a number, "mill ... 100 cards." The kid started COUNTING OFF CARDS and when he got to 100, he looked at my friend and shrugged, because he STILL HAD 20 CARDS IN HIS DECK! My friend lost because he was unable to restart the combo!
So Burn is a tough match up.. but in my experience Chalice of the Void has been the best counter to them (obviously Timely Reinforcements is also amazing, but since you are running mono blue, Chalice will still do the trick)
And for the lands:
Gemstone Caverns is really good because it actually makes your opening turn on the draw infinitely better than theirs since you can then cast a 2 mana spell. And it is a really good land to sideboard out (similar to how I usually side out a fetch)
Inkmoth Nexus is really good because with part the water veil it makes winning possible within 2 turns. Doesn't seem like a lot until you have matches where you need like 3 turn spells to effectively win and you've already cast almost all of them.
And then the draw lands are really good as well because they allow you to keep hands without a mine effect because you can effectively leave open mana to disrupt and then draw a card EOT if they don't do anything. It also works really well with miracles in the mid/late game
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Speaking of spirits, my meta concists mostly of UW control (yay!) and bant spirits (boo...). How would you guys sideboard against spirits to have a fighting chance? I've found Pithing Needle/Sorcerous Spyglass to be decent against Mausoleum Wanderer, but other than that, how would you guys make that match up bearable? I myself run a white splash for sideboard options FYI
Personally I run 3x Terminus, 1x Supreme Verdict and it has worked well against Spirits (UW and Bant)
I also run two mainboard path to exile which works well. Usually they don't have THAT fast of a clock so it's just a matter of taking care of their Spell Quellers
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Spirits
Of course! As of lately I run:
3 Snapcaster Mage
Spells (35)
4 Time Warp
3 Temporal Mastery
3 Part the Waterveil
1 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Dictate of Kruphix
2 Howling Mine
2 Cryptic Command
2 Remand
3 Gigadrowse
4 Exhaustion
2 Path to Exile
4 Serum Visions
1 Ancestral Vision
8 Island
4 Flooded Strand
2 Polluted Delta
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Geier Reach Sanitarium
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Glacial Fortress
3 Terminus
1 Supreme Verdict
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Chalice of the Void
1 Commandeer
2 Dispel
1 Negate
2 Stony Silence
1 Celestial Purge
Couple notes on changes;
i reckon Opt is mostly there for triggering the miracle on Terminus.
I wouldn't even touch the card, probably at all, if i wasn't running Terminus in the side. Without Terminus i'd just run a set of Remand or some other mix of cantripping value spells.
List tags are malformed.
Honestly the only real reason you would need instant speed terminus shenanigans would be in like an Affinity or Infect matchup where you have to worry about their man lands but that is why I run two path mainboard..
Ancestral Vision though... that card is the nuts. love it lately haha
How about letting the Meddling Mage resolve, and playing Snapcaster Mage- Echoing Truth on Gaddock with Meddling Mage's ability on the stack? Would the blocking snap keep you alive? Would it even have to block? In desperation mode, you could always Gigadrowse for 1-2.
That's one or two chips off the ol'block of ice.
If he still names Gigadrowse, your Cryptic Command and any turn spells are now castable. Next turn is probably Cryptic to tap his team and bounce the Mage that says Gigadrowse, then play GD to transform Thing in the Ice FTW. If he names Cryptic and you kept Gigadrowse, you still just need one more spell to do the flippy thing.
TL;DR: I think you had an out.
Spirits
The problem is that the Meddling Mage ability isn't a trigger. It enters the battlefield with the card named already so they could have played around his threats and he wouldn't be able to respond.
That being said, I think the best line would have been letting it resolve - he names gigadrowse and then you the snap echo the Teeg and use snap as a blocker.. Probably, but humans is tough... That isn't to say he couldn't just follow his next turn by Kitesail or something
Thanks! Good luck in MA, let us know how you end up doing.
@everyone in regard to my Humans match...yep, Meddling Mage has some unusual templating which means it doesn’t have an EtB trigger: you either respond while he’s on the stack or forever hold your peace.
Don’t quote me on this because I didn’t take notes and my memory is hazy here, but I think I was dead on board even when blocking with Snap and Thing unless I hit beaters (not Teeg) with Truth. I could still certainly have Gigadrowsed in response to the Meddling Mage cast, but that seems to have been the line that gives me the least chance to topdeck my way into a flipped Thing, and gives my opponent the most information in terms of what to name with the Mage. Still, it was the safest line and possibly the one I should have taken, hoping to hit a couple Serums or whatever when I untap.
It’s matches like this where I miss my Boomerang. Just adding another differently-named bounce spell to the mix could certainly have dug me out. The splash colors also shine here, of course. But Humans in competent hands are just brutal in general for us, no matter how teched up you are.
Nothing cool from GRN for us so far as I saw. Selective Snare might have been interesting at instant speed, but lacking that it’s a hard pass.
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Lands 22 islands 1 inkmoth
Creatures 2 snapcasters 1 thing in the ice
Spells 4 time warp. 3 temporal mastery. 3 part the waterfall. 4 remand 3 cryptic command
4 gigadrowse 3 exhaustion 4 dictate of kruphix 2 howling mine 1 jtms 3 ancestral vision
Sideboard- 3 chalice of the void 3 titi 2 dispel 1 negate 1 ceramonious rejection 2 pithing needle
1 dismember 2 echoing truth
I played a prison tezz list first round. Game one went to him and took forever. He had one bridge in play and I had about 4 mine effects. Could not find a cryptic to bounce bridge till too late (all 3 were buried in my Last 15 cards).
Game 2 I landed a turn 2 thing and he whirs 2 ensnaring bridges back to back. Turn 5 eot echoing truths the bridges back, flip thing with a time walk on my turn and he never gets another turn. Game 3 we went to time
Match 2. Black white rats. His deck was not great but funny enough his rats were able to get fairly big against turns. I beat him pretty easily both games.
Match 3. BW eldrazi game 1 I controlled the board, allowing him to cast a couple matter reshapers and flash in back to back dictates. He then resolves a thought not seer which takes a turn spell. I the exhaustion him and play a mine. After that I remand a reality smasher then cryptic tap and draw. Once I hit 9 lands I start chaining turns and end the game shortly after.
Game 2- same as game one. I let him resolve matter reshaper and displacer. I believe I cast turn 2 titi this game and proceed to giga, exhaustion, remand any threats till I chain a couple turns and win.
Match 4 RW burn game 1 I am able to steal. I get a couple mines down and he gets me to 4 life. I then awaken a land with waterveil. I attack him down to 6 but I run out of turns. So I exhaust him with no counter back up. He plays one land and bolts me to 1 and I win next turn.
Game 2 I have a good hand but I miss my 4th land drop even with a mine and get run over.
Game 3. I keep a 1 lander with chalice and ancestral vision. Hit the second land drop on turn 3 and cast chalice but it's too late. He resolved 2 lava spikes and a lavamancer before that. He then Boris charms me to death while I have about 4 turn spells in hand.
Match 5 Humans Game 1. I am able to Gigs exhaust him while he only has a noble and 2 lands in play. I take a couple extra turns but I run out of gas. He then gets to untap with a full grip and I only draw lands. Couldn't find a mine effect.
Game 2 he has a nut draw of turn 1 aether vial. Turn 2 champion of parish into teeg. Turn 3 he plays a second parish followed by a freebooter and the 2 drop that puts a counter on everything. Turn 4 he plays another 2 drop that gives a counter to everything and hits me for 18 while I was at 15. So I had a slow hand and an exhaustion but I was planning on dropping a dictate at his eot so I could untap and then exhaustion and hopefully find an out to teeg as he shuts down out deck.
Match 6. UB mill. This matchup is horrible. I got crushed but I'm thinking that our only chance of winning is to resolve a titi and go from there. Can't let mesmeric orb hit the feild either.
This was my first run with the deck so I'm no expert but my impression so far is that we need more mine effects, the games where I was able to land a mine effect or 2 before turn 5 went in my favor as it allowed me use my exhastions and gigadrowse more liberally knowing I would be drawing 3 or 7 cards with ancestral.
I wasn't impressed with ancestral. Always felt too slow. A couple times it was nice to draw all those cards but most of the time I would rather have played serum visions. Visions also plays better with titi allowing us to flip him faster
Also can we replicate a gigadrowse if it's being cast via snap?
I found myself thinking that turn 3-4 can get awkward for us. Usually when we are faced with wanting to wait to eot dictate so we can untap and exhaustion or gigs but sometimes being forced to exhaustion so we don't die that turn. This being really hard if we don't have cryptic or the 4th land for cryptic to follow up, It also feels that some amount of filtering would be nice but I don't know how to squeeze it in because the good filter spells are all at 3 mana for blue. Jace felt ok. Never amazing but never bad Best plays were usually bouncing snaps back to hand to recast time warp. I liked the one titi main as it is a whole turn faster than awakened waterveil. Also my opponent would almost always be tapped down by the time I deployed him so removal was never an issue. I think I want the 4th exhaustion in the main. I love remand in the main. It plays very well with cryptic and it draws us cards which this deck needs badly.
I like mono blue for a couple reasons, it allows us to streamline the combo meaning when we are going off I don't have to worry about drawing removal or whatever else thus fizzling the combo. At the same time we do get those draws where we just don't have enough interaction early and get put in bad spots so the splash would be appreciated there,
So with all that being said, I know some matchup will always be bad (burn, mill, humans) but would going for more mine effects main be warranted? I see most of you have settled on 6 but the deck felt like it wanted to land one on turn 2 and 3 while using gigs to tap their lands rendering all the cards the draw useless.
So couple things:
A) Yeah you can replicate with snapcaster mage! That's what makes it so awesome in the deck!
B) I agree about Ancestral Vision.. I just run 1x in the deck with 4x dictate, 2x howling mine, and 4x serum visions because I see it as a midrange game winner.. It shines in those matchups where you are being hit by thought seize and Liliana. And since I have a lot of Mardu Pyromancer at my LGS it seems to work nicely for me
C) I run 6 mine effects and it seems about right... I think if you want to improve the quality of your draws you could run Search for Azcanta in place of Jace possibly? I did for a while and really liked it. The reason I took it out was because I was constantly playing it wrong lol too frequently I would flip for the extra mana and get punished.. I was also using it in place of a Howling Mine because of the abundance of Kolghan's Command and other artifact removal during the initial KCI outburst haha
Like i said before it feels like filtering would be nice but the core list is so tight that we don't have much wiggle room. Baby jace actually does seem like a good fit though except he turns on removal and we have no way to recur him once he dies but being able to filter those hands where we draw the wrong parts of our deck too soon does seem appealing.
So what other decks do you guys run when not on turns? I currently have grixis shadow and I'm thinking about building infect.
So a quick report of things,
First round: BYE
Second & Third Rounds: Were against UW Control and Hardened Scales Affinity.. both resulted in draws and were super frustrating.. I don't know if any of you have ran into this but a lot of times people will have difficulty interacting with your deck or be confused how to play their deck into your combo so they take ungodly long turns but then blame you in the end for going to time... With my matchup against the Hardened Scales he was taking up to 3 minutes resolving Ancient Stirrings despite his choices having no affect on me winning through time warp effects.. [END RANT] lol but yeah against that dude he called judge unnecessarily twice for things that the judge dismissed as nothing so when we went to turns I just did a small combo so he wouldn't have any turns before the draw lol (dirty magic, I know...)
Round 4: Sultai Control - won easily 2-0.. My first game I had the combo easily, and then my second game I played almost like UW Control but then ended up ultimating jace against him (without a Mine effect in play! which was insane) Total heart of the cards Yugi moment lol
Round 5: Against a friend who plays UW Control (2-0) - had a cool interaction in game one where he had detention sphered my Jace but I was able to cast cryptic to bounce it and then repeatedly Exhaustion him as I built card advantage with Jace and set up for like infinite Temporal Mastery Miracles haha
Round 6: Humans... AWFUL.. enough said lol
But honestly the power of Mantis Rider with exalt swinging for 4 in game one was insane.. and then game two I almost stabilized and started to combo but was left in this weird situation where I Terminus the board and exhaustion thinking I was safe but he was able to of course vial in the Mantis Rider to hit for lethal.
(If I had won this I would of cut to top 8)
So some random notes I learned:
Yep, that was my first thought when seeing your list. Serum is probably mandatory if you have 4 Thing in the 75.
It does feel horrible to burn through Gigadrowses and Exhaustions without one of these effects gaining you advantage, which is why Cryptic and Remand are such great pieces of interaction in this deck.
The number and nature of mine effects is still kind of an open question (remember that Jace counts as one). I like 7 (4 Dictate, 2 Mine, 1 JtMS) + 1 Ancestral, but this is by no means set in stone. I do think the variety here is crucial, with JtMS serving as an alternate wincon, AV breaking the symmetry of 1-for-1s in heavily interactive matchups, Mine fitting most cleanly along the curve while being the most dangerous to actually resolve, and Dictate being the most elegant fit overall.
I'm not entirely convinced that we need more filtering than 4x Serum. We're a quantity over quality deck in terms of card draw, because 1) we have enough redundancy and flexibility in interaction that most pieces we'll find can keep us alive, and 2) we want to keep making our land drops all the way up to the 11th in a fair number of games.
When not on Turns, I'm playing BGx; usually Abzan, but lately straight Golgari. I'm sure the posters ITT will forgive me when I say I'll be taking fewer extra turns for a while after Assassin's Trophy is released. (For what its worth, the printing of Trophy probably incentivizes us more toward AV, both as a nod to the increased meta share of BGx and as a source of card advantage that can't be removed.)
Dude...don't hesitate to act in a situation like this. I'm a pretty friendly and lenient guy so far as tournament play goes, and even I would have politely asked him to make a decision about 45 seconds after Stirrings was cast, and after another 30s or so I would have called a judge. That is far, far too long of a time to take IMO.
Nice work overall! Unlucky on going to time twice and getting paired up against Humans in the deciding matchup. 2/2 Negate/Dispel does seem like a nice spread, but when I tested counter-heavy setups in general I found it easy to overboard on such effects; just something to keep in mind.
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Other than that, the Negate are reserved for like Mardu Pyromancer and whatnot where Dispel was a poor sideboard choice
But yeah humans was dumb.. it stinks because Dictate and Howling Mine heavily favor them in terms of card advantage.. And they have 3 direct hate cards in (Sin Collector, Kitesail Freebooter, and Kambal if they chose to run it)
Here's what I've gleaned from the comments on this forum, and my own brainstorming. I'd really value your feedback.
1) I like the Mono-U version. We're not trying to control the board forever, just buy time until we "go off," and Blue is VERY good at delay tactics. When considering our life as a resource, I don't want to spend it on getting W sources.
2) I LOVE Thing in the Ice in this deck! At worst, it slows down the opponent's development when deployed early. If they Path to Exile it, it's like we just cast Rampant Growth and made them discard a card. Most often, it ends the game far more quickly than our other options.
3) Ancestral Vision might be better than Howling Mine as the fifth card-draw spell.
4) Because Modern decks can usually win unopposed by turn 4 or earlier, I think we need to be able to count on two "disruptive" spells in our first four turns. Run the math, and you'll see if we have 16 of those spells, we have an 82% chance of drawing two of them by the time we've drawn 10 cards. Every additional disruption card in the deck adds about 3%. Every additional card we draw (or filter) adds 4%. The problem is, card draw spells only work if we draw and cast them, so when building the deck, cantrip spells like Remand count as about 1/4 of a card drawn. (Serum Visions, by my math, counts as a full card drawn due to the number of cards it exposes you to.)
Here's the list I ran this weekend.
20 Island
3 Radiant Fountain
Disruptive Spells
4 Gigadrowse
4 Remand
2 Boomerang
3 Exhaustion
3 Cryptic Command
4 Thing in the Ice
Card Draw
1 Ancestral Vision
4 Dictate of Kruphix
Turn Spells
4 Time Warp
4 Temporal Mastery
2 Part the Waterveil
2 Nexus of Fate
3 Dragon's Claw
4 Downsize
2 Boomerang
2 Negate
2 Dispel
1 Flashfreeze
1 Hibernation
In all my playtesting and two FNM's, I've beaten Humans (when they didn't draw many Kitesail Freebooters), Affinity, Scapeshift, Tron, E-Tron, UW Control, and some other brews. Favorite moments: 1) vs UW Control when the OP tapped out at the end of my turn and mumbled 'I don't think there's an instant turn spell' and I smiled and cast Nexus of Fate and never gave him another untap step. 2) vs E-Tron on Turn 5 after going to turns ... and taking ALL FIVE OF THEM!
I've lost, though, to Jeskai Pyromancer (I guess it's still a thing) Humans (when they draw lots of Kitesail Freebooters), Grixis Death's Shadow, and UG Emerge. I could attribute at least some of each loss to mana screw/flood, but the common thread was they all had very disruptive gameplans. I also imagine having trouble with the speed of Bogles and Infect, thus the sideboard choices.
I'm considering dropping the Boomerangs for a second Ancestral Vision and a Search for Azcanta.
So ... any thoughts or suggestions?
But since you are running mono blue you can afford some leniency in your mana base.. I would recommend trying to run: Geier Reach Sanitarium, Mikokoro Center of the Sea, and Gemstone Caverns/Inkmoth Nexus possibly over time.. They all do a really good job at smoothing out areas in the deck while not digging into spots reserved for key spells
Also, I would probably cut a cryptic for another draw engine.. Ancestral Vision alone isn't reliable unless you are chaining turns since they will most likely outpace you.. I would recommend at least one Howling Mine.. even though im not a fan of it since it dies to SOOOO much artifact hate, it does do the job efficiently when it resolves and your opponent passes back even once. Plus cryptic is late game interaction honestly so running more than 2 in a deck like this throws off the curve
Other than that, everything looks right on! Glad our discussions have helped in a way! I honestly love this deck to the point where even losses are fun. Its just such a niche combo that people are never expecting and when you win you feel unbeatable. It reminds me of High Tide in legacy in that sense
Thanks for the feedback.
No, budget is not a factor. I was trying to keep it a clean plan and not get too cute. I thought Part the Waterveil and Thing in the Ice made Inkmoth Nexus unnecessary, but you're the second person to mention it in as many days. I'll give it a shot. Gemstone Caverns and the draw-lands have been on my radar, too. That would mean cutting Radiant Fountains; what is your experience in the burn matchup? Can we afford not to have them, there?
I'm not sure I agree on cutting a Cryptic Command, though. I've relied on it heavily; Turn 4 is almost always either that or Gigadrowse.
If I put the Howling Mine back in, would you suggest cutting an AV or Search for Azcanta?
Are you comfortable with the absence of Serum Visions?
Funny anecdote re: High Tide. Back in the late 90's when it was in Standard, I had a friend who loved running that deck. He once sat down next to a first-timer who had a huge deck of unsleeved cards. My friend went off and demonstrated the combo (Palinchron, I think?), then arbitrarily picked a number, "mill ... 100 cards." The kid started COUNTING OFF CARDS and when he got to 100, he looked at my friend and shrugged, because he STILL HAD 20 CARDS IN HIS DECK! My friend lost because he was unable to restart the combo!
So Burn is a tough match up.. but in my experience Chalice of the Void has been the best counter to them (obviously Timely Reinforcements is also amazing, but since you are running mono blue, Chalice will still do the trick)
And for the lands:
Gemstone Caverns is really good because it actually makes your opening turn on the draw infinitely better than theirs since you can then cast a 2 mana spell. And it is a really good land to sideboard out (similar to how I usually side out a fetch)
Inkmoth Nexus is really good because with part the water veil it makes winning possible within 2 turns. Doesn't seem like a lot until you have matches where you need like 3 turn spells to effectively win and you've already cast almost all of them.
And then the draw lands are really good as well because they allow you to keep hands without a mine effect because you can effectively leave open mana to disrupt and then draw a card EOT if they don't do anything. It also works really well with miracles in the mid/late game
Personally I run 3x Terminus, 1x Supreme Verdict and it has worked well against Spirits (UW and Bant)
I also run two mainboard path to exile which works well. Usually they don't have THAT fast of a clock so it's just a matter of taking care of their Spell Quellers