played a few games with my list. I actually modified to go -1 remand for +1 think twice to make sure I hit my land drops, but I can't say enough for remand so i'm keeping a 3/3 split with think twice. though I must say the standout is honestly logic knot such a good card. IMO way better than condescend, only because of how you can ensure a hard counter even if they have like 8 untapped lands. With a full hand, you can easily choose which cards to exile and not hurt your snapcaster mage.
If anything I would switch out a spell snare for cryptic command before remand for the 2/4 split. I know Guillaume plays 4 spell snare, but it really bothers me how dead 2 copies can be in your hand. That being said, the more I play this deck in particular, the more I see his original build being the best at what it does and for my own flavor would cut 2 spell snare for a remand and a snapcaster.
I am not suggesting cutting Logic Knot for Condescend right now (though seriously, you don't usually need to counter something late-game using Delve instead of mana because you should have more mana than any opponent who isn't playing Tron or Scapeshift). I am suggesting cutting Remand for Condescend. Since I value scry 2 at about the same as drawing a card, I can't see why people play Remand instead of Condescend and when outside of counter-wars and against flashback Remand would be better. Can someone please enlighten me?
Remand's real value is the mana trades it forces without losing card advantage. It buys us extra turns in the early game and can halt an opponents final push during late game for cheap.
Condescend requires more resources to be dumped into it on average to achieve the same result. And on the topic of it's scry 2 vs Remand's draw a card: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Knowing what is coming is nice but not worth as much as an actual card to play with.
Sure, there is a chance of spending $4 on a booster and getting the Mythic Rare $30 super card. There is also a chance of surviving putting your tongue in a light socket.
We have to ask ourselves what we are using Logic Knot and Condescend for. Why aren't we considering Negate? This card is relevant in just about every match up. It may not Scry or draw, but it's a hard counter and definitely not narrow. Just think about how many cards this is good against. Now reconsider.
We have to ask ourselves what we are using Logic Knot and Condescend for. Why aren't we considering Negate? This card is relevant in just about every match up. It may not Scry or draw, but it's a hard counter and definitely not narrow. Just think about how many cards this is good against. Now reconsider.
Creatures are still too important to not have counters that do not deal with them in 5he main. We do not want to leanon our boardwipes too much.
We have to ask ourselves what we are using Logic Knot and Condescend for. Why aren't we considering Negate? This card is relevant in just about every match up. It may not Scry or draw, but it's a hard counter and definitely not narrow. Just think about how many cards this is good against. Now reconsider.
Creatures are still too important to not have counters that do not deal with them in 5he main. We do not want to leanon our boardwipes too much.
Don't be surprised to see Dissolve there. If we can cast Cryptic Command, we should have no problem with Dissolve/Dissipate. Also, Rewind seems like a viable option to be able to untap your mana and cast Cryptic Command if they try to play another threat, or have mana open for Sphinx/WSZ.
Remand's real value is the mana trades it forces without losing card advantage. It buys us extra turns in the early game and can halt an opponents final push during late game for cheap.
Condescend requires more resources to be dumped into it on average to achieve the same result. And on the topic of it's scry 2 vs Remand's draw a card: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Knowing what is coming is nice but not worth as much as an actual card to play with.
Remand does not GAIN card advantage. Remand does NOT buy us (the draw-go control shell) extra turns. Remand does NOT do well late game. Remand is a tempo play, early game it can "time walk" an opponent if you have an early clock on them. Remand does not belong in the draw-go shell of this deck.
All Remand does in the draw-go shell is delay a card that you know is valuable (if it wasnt you wouldnt have countered it) for a random card off the top of your deck. With a deck that runs a ton of cantrips and 26 lands, the odds are NOT in your favour that the card is better than what you had. This deck does not have the space/desire to play mini/sometimes "time walks"; we do not have a quick clock, our average card is less powerful than most other decks average card (its why we run so many cantrips) and we do not want to be at card disadvantage.
Now Condescend does not draw a card but this deck has a ton of card draw, in that context card filtering is almost as good. Condescend is often accused of being recourse heavy, but X only needs to be 1 for it to control a spell. Early game condescend can be as cheap as 1U, late game, when the opponent is in top deck mode, its ok to spend all our mana to counter their spell, as they will only be playing 1 spell a turn.
Remand does not GAIN card advantage. Remand does NOT buy us (the draw-go control shell) extra turns. Remand does NOT do well late game. Remand is a tempo play, early game it can "time walk" an opponent if you have an early clock on them. Remand does not belong in the draw-go shell of this deck.
All Remand does in the draw-go shell is delay a card that you know is valuable (if it wasnt you wouldnt have countered it) for a random card off the top of your deck. With a deck that runs a ton of cantrips and 26 lands, the odds are NOT in your favour that the card is better than what you had. This deck does not have the space/desire to play mini/sometimes "time walks"; we do not have a quick clock, our average card is less powerful than most other decks average card (its why we run so many cantrips) and we do not want to be at card disadvantage.
Now Condescend does not draw a card but this deck has a ton of card draw, in that context card filtering is almost as good. Condescend is often accused of being recourse heavy, but X only needs to be 1 for it to control a spell. Early game condescend can be as cheap as 1U, late game, when the opponent is in top deck mode, its ok to spend all our mana to counter their spell, as they will only be playing 1 spell a turn.
I'm bored at work, so I'll bite.
"Tempo" is a word people use in magic to describe positional advantage. Most Magic strategy was ripped off of chess and repackaged. Given the controlled pace at which things can be deployed to the board in Magic, we consider the playing of permanents to generate tempo, or positional advantage. The thing is, all pacing begins with the games most fundamental resource: mana. Lands are the foremost indicator of positional advantage, as far as the Control deck is concerned. Creatures and the like die in even, or even favorable exchanges; lands sit there forever.
In a deck that's properly constructed, the answers will come to creatures or whatever else. It's your mana development that's the issue. The point in the game where you can cast 2 spells a turn represents your fundamental turn with a draw-go deck. This is where Remand becomes a good card. For starters, its mana cost is only 2, so it allows itself to be played with another spell reliably on turn 4, or even 3. Most importantly, it trades mana, the most important resource, at an often favorable clip. You talked about needing tempo for Remand to be good; the lands you have in play is the positional advantage that makes Remand fit in draw-go. You think it's even on both sides, but your deck scales infinitely better with additional land drops. It's your entire strategy (lets pretend unbeatable end-game engines like Eye of Ugin don't exist for a minute).
I think people play a lot of archetypes and assume that the point of this draw-go is that they never resolve anything and you answer every threat at the highest life total possible. If that's what you believe, you fill your deck with more sorceries and more answers. Eventually your answers becomes threats in their own right, so as to not be dead cards in situations. Now you've basically built yourself and Esper Midrange/Tapout Control deck or whatever else you want to call it. If you believe the point is to develop your manabase till you can play Think Twice + removal every turn, you end up with they style of deck that Andrew Cuneo and Wafo Tapa build. Suddenly the best draw-go players and deck builders in the history of Magic don't look like fools anymore.
On another note, the mana exchange on Utter End is atrocious. You need very specific, prevalent threats that your entire deck can't answer to justify running what 9 times out of 10 will amount to a 4-mana Doom Blade as a silver bullet. Considering the deck construction, if my opponent plays a Liliana, I'd rather cast Concentrate and draw 3 cards, then Cryptic Command, Snapcaster, WSZ, Colonnade, or whatever to kill it. I know new cards are fun but this card doesn't seem playable.
Seems like people are over valuing or under valuing Remand. Yes Remand is terrible in the matchups where mana is not the deciding factor but in those matchups that require to win wars to resolve specific spells its amazing. Without cheap counters control just loses the counter war against blue combo decks which can run narrow counters due to not caring abiut creatures. Against more linear decks remand is good early to get you to the mana necessary to cast cryptics are revelatiins. You want Remand imo just not in high numbers.
Man I really like that setup for counterspells, I was feeling a bit light at 9 so this is helpful, only thing I can say is maybe switch one for logic knot
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Man I really like that setup for counterspells, I was feeling a bit light at 9 so this is helpful, only thing I can say is maybe switch one for logic knot
Man I really like that setup for counterspells, I was feeling a bit light at 9 so this is helpful, only thing I can say is maybe switch one for logic knot
8-12 is good depending on whether you're running main deck disruption. Were you referring to my counter set up?
Man I really like that setup for counterspells, I was feeling a bit light at 9 so this is helpful, only thing I can say is maybe switch one for logic knot
8-12 is good depending on whether you're running main deck disruption. Were you referring to my counter set up?
Yeah I was talking about the counter setup, I am still torn on maindeck disruption but am probably gonna keep it out and stick with a heavier removal and counterspell package
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How do you guys side against modern control? Or even the mirror Esper control?
We have so many dead cards against control, american has a better match up against us, they just burn us out.
At least the list I played against had almost no creatures at all, about 4 only. What do you side in and out against those lists where creature removal does nothing?
Just side out the boardwipes and shadow of doubt against uwr for thoughtseize and teferi. The match should be easy since your disruption is better and you draw more cards allowing you to win counterwars over important things such as revelations and teferi. Your goals should be to remove all their colonades and resolving rev and wsz while making sure you do not get burned out which is not very difficult. The one card you should not let resolve for them is Keranos.
Why is everyone persevering on the draw-go approach when a more black-based, sorcery-speed one would be more powerful to work with? Modern has historically showed that Thoughtseize and Inquisition of Kozilek followed by strong 2 and 3 drops are better than trying to play catch-all the whole game at the danger of constantly falling behind, and this is even more valid in a format where Pod and Affinity too often bypass Mana Leak and Spell Snare by a full turn.
Black > Blue when it comes to disruption-suites. I think that if you have a bit of knowledge about the format you probably have come to realize this.
Esper is known to be able to produce lots of card advantage thanks to Esper Charm--> Why not trying Pack Rats? Seize-->Rat makes every fair deck cringe as they have one-turn window before the Rat replicates himself. Reciprocally, Rat-->Seize is your way of capitalizing on late-game dead draws (you can count also removal spells against combo decks).
Esper has Lingering Souls which is a fantastic three drop which is THE card apt to fight Liliana of the Veil. Do you want to fight the metagame trying to top to Cryptic Command? That is pretty outdated and hardly working. This metagame is too fast.
Start from something like this:
4 Creeping Tar Pit (Liliana slayer, quick clock paired with Rats)
2 Mutavault
6 discard spells
4 Pack Rat
4 Esper Charm
4 Lingering Souls
1 Batterskull
2/3/4 Path to Exile
This "Esper counterpart" of a BGx framework is what you need to succeed now. Delta and Strand now make this possible. Forego Cryptic and Spell Snare because you are going to be less successful with those on average than simply trying to estabilish a window with your discard spells to let your haymakers go through. Junk and Jund teach this.
Why just play a weaker form of midrange when you can just play bgx. No other form of discard heavy midrange would be better than that. Control actually has an easier time against affinjty than bgx while bgx has a better combo matchup and is the sole reason for twins decline. There should be a competitive deck for control players thats not a watered down bgx.
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I am not suggesting cutting Logic Knot for Condescend right now (though seriously, you don't usually need to counter something late-game using Delve instead of mana because you should have more mana than any opponent who isn't playing Tron or Scapeshift). I am suggesting cutting Remand for Condescend. Since I value scry 2 at about the same as drawing a card, I can't see why people play Remand instead of Condescend and when outside of counter-wars and against flashback Remand would be better. Can someone please enlighten me?
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
Condescend requires more resources to be dumped into it on average to achieve the same result. And on the topic of it's scry 2 vs Remand's draw a card: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Knowing what is coming is nice but not worth as much as an actual card to play with.
Creatures are still too important to not have counters that do not deal with them in 5he main. We do not want to leanon our boardwipes too much.
I understand. Our counter options are:
If I were to have 12 counters, I'd go with:
Don't be surprised to see Dissolve there. If we can cast Cryptic Command, we should have no problem with Dissolve/Dissipate. Also, Rewind seems like a viable option to be able to untap your mana and cast Cryptic Command if they try to play another threat, or have mana open for Sphinx/WSZ.
Remand does not GAIN card advantage. Remand does NOT buy us (the draw-go control shell) extra turns. Remand does NOT do well late game. Remand is a tempo play, early game it can "time walk" an opponent if you have an early clock on them. Remand does not belong in the draw-go shell of this deck.
All Remand does in the draw-go shell is delay a card that you know is valuable (if it wasnt you wouldnt have countered it) for a random card off the top of your deck. With a deck that runs a ton of cantrips and 26 lands, the odds are NOT in your favour that the card is better than what you had. This deck does not have the space/desire to play mini/sometimes "time walks"; we do not have a quick clock, our average card is less powerful than most other decks average card (its why we run so many cantrips) and we do not want to be at card disadvantage.
Now Condescend does not draw a card but this deck has a ton of card draw, in that context card filtering is almost as good. Condescend is often accused of being recourse heavy, but X only needs to be 1 for it to control a spell. Early game condescend can be as cheap as 1U, late game, when the opponent is in top deck mode, its ok to spend all our mana to counter their spell, as they will only be playing 1 spell a turn.
"Tempo" is a word people use in magic to describe positional advantage. Most Magic strategy was ripped off of chess and repackaged. Given the controlled pace at which things can be deployed to the board in Magic, we consider the playing of permanents to generate tempo, or positional advantage. The thing is, all pacing begins with the games most fundamental resource: mana. Lands are the foremost indicator of positional advantage, as far as the Control deck is concerned. Creatures and the like die in even, or even favorable exchanges; lands sit there forever.
In a deck that's properly constructed, the answers will come to creatures or whatever else. It's your mana development that's the issue. The point in the game where you can cast 2 spells a turn represents your fundamental turn with a draw-go deck. This is where Remand becomes a good card. For starters, its mana cost is only 2, so it allows itself to be played with another spell reliably on turn 4, or even 3. Most importantly, it trades mana, the most important resource, at an often favorable clip. You talked about needing tempo for Remand to be good; the lands you have in play is the positional advantage that makes Remand fit in draw-go. You think it's even on both sides, but your deck scales infinitely better with additional land drops. It's your entire strategy (lets pretend unbeatable end-game engines like Eye of Ugin don't exist for a minute).
I think people play a lot of archetypes and assume that the point of this draw-go is that they never resolve anything and you answer every threat at the highest life total possible. If that's what you believe, you fill your deck with more sorceries and more answers. Eventually your answers becomes threats in their own right, so as to not be dead cards in situations. Now you've basically built yourself and Esper Midrange/Tapout Control deck or whatever else you want to call it. If you believe the point is to develop your manabase till you can play Think Twice + removal every turn, you end up with they style of deck that Andrew Cuneo and Wafo Tapa build. Suddenly the best draw-go players and deck builders in the history of Magic don't look like fools anymore.
On another note, the mana exchange on Utter End is atrocious. You need very specific, prevalent threats that your entire deck can't answer to justify running what 9 times out of 10 will amount to a 4-mana Doom Blade as a silver bullet. Considering the deck construction, if my opponent plays a Liliana, I'd rather cast Concentrate and draw 3 cards, then Cryptic Command, Snapcaster, WSZ, Colonnade, or whatever to kill it. I know new cards are fun but this card doesn't seem playable.
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8-12 is good depending on whether you're running main deck disruption. Were you referring to my counter set up?
Yeah I was talking about the counter setup, I am still torn on maindeck disruption but am probably gonna keep it out and stick with a heavier removal and counterspell package
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We have so many dead cards against control, american has a better match up against us, they just burn us out.
At least the list I played against had almost no creatures at all, about 4 only. What do you side in and out against those lists where creature removal does nothing?
Why just play a weaker form of midrange when you can just play bgx. No other form of discard heavy midrange would be better than that. Control actually has an easier time against affinjty than bgx while bgx has a better combo matchup and is the sole reason for twins decline. There should be a competitive deck for control players thats not a watered down bgx.