MTG Salvation

I think clique main is kind of just a waste of space right now. Its good against some decks, but unless you have a really narrow local meta, its very much a sideboard card at best (and I would not play it sideboard in esper).
You seem to be going back and forth on opt and think twice, but no matter which you decide on, 4 serum, 3 opt/tt, 4 esper charm, and 2 rev is too much air. Spending all of your mana on cards that don't do anything means you won't have the mana to cast the spells that do, and modern is more and more forcing you to interact early.
I think you probably need more boardwipes in general, though adding the fatal pushes helps atleast a little bit.
You definitely need more basics though. Cut a manland, or some of the checklands.
Rain of tears has no business being in your sideboard. Whats it even there for? Valakut? Leyline/runed halo are better anyways.
In general though, you'd have more sideboard space if you cut a lot of those cantrips for real cards. Blessed alliance, a bit of discard, teferi, another wrath, mainboard leylines, even a timely, are all playable mainboard cards.
Lastly, you don't need 4 leylines. Just playing 2 is fine. You don't have to mulligan aggressively for them. Burn has creatures, so its not like leyline is an auto win. You just want something to dig to, to ensure you don't lose to 10 turns of chipshots.

Thanks for the input : I've tested with 4 Opt, 0 Serum, 4 Esper Charm and 2 Rev and it felt a lot smoother. You were right on when you said that there was too much air in the deck. I've cut Tar Pit for an Island and having less lands coming tapped is nice. I've added 2 Blessed Alliance mainboard and 1 WSZ and for the first time ever, I went 2-1 against Burn yesterday. No Clique in the main (2 in the side for combo and tempo). The list is coming along well now, I'm happy with it. Sideboard needs maybe a litte bit of work, but should be okay nevertheless.

Played in the classic today. I went 6-2 but was paired up in the last round so I scooped to him, as it turns out into 9th place, and leaving me in exactly 33rd for maximal bad beats.

List:


Felt very smooth today, overall. My two losses were to humans and to a jeskai control deck.

The humans match was just bad beats--between a mulligan to 5 and bad mana screw, I really didn't play magic.

The jeskai matchup was really, really bad. He was probably the slowest player I've ever seen. He got game one after a poor keep put me on the back foot the entire time. Then, in game two, he just kinda... slowed down. I should have called a judge sooner than I did, but he got two slow play warnings. As we went to turns, I had him mathematically dead. He had no threats left, no possible countermagic for zenith, and no way to remove leyline. I knew this because of multiple resolved extractions. I just didn't find it with azcanta within the extra turns to kill him, but he was 100% checkmate dead.

Sideboard was great. Biggest overperformers were mainboard timely and azcanta, sideboard spyglass and baneslayer angels.

I beat ug infect, gw elves, affinity, naya evolution binder of control hate, jeskai, and value town. Lost to jeskai and humans, both of which feel like good matchups. Value town and naya evolution were complete stolen matches, both on the back of baneslayer/elspeth out of the board.

What is the point of irrigated farmland in this deck? Even with the move away from the twelve mana x spell and colonnade end game I'm still pretty much always happy making my land drops and rarely wondering what to do with my mana. I tried the card for a short time and never saw a situation where cycling it was actually good, but having it tapped was frequently inefficient or outright bad. Unlike many decks we can actually use our sixth,seventh, eighth land drops for things like wrath and pass with snap knot or cryptic up, or charm and draw into cryptic or snap, or opt into stw etc etc.

Quote from amalek0 »

I almost never cast jace on T4; most of the time when I do, it feels like a desperation play. I feel much better about jace further down, maybe turns 7-10, as the nail in the coffin to an otherwise even position. That's part of why I really want to jam some Teferi--I think he might actually be better at that time range than jace because he can actually answer a threat while jace just unsummons it.

I agree that Teferi may be better than Jace, if only for the fact that he's essentially a 3CMC planeswalker in combo matchups. Most of the format is creatures, but it's not as if Jace was a board control planeswalker like Gideon or Elspeth, anyway. They both are crappy if your opponent has multiple threats on board, going to either 5 or 2 loyalty depending on what ability you activate. Jace probably gets the upper hand on account of being 4 mana (which from a hypergeomdist standpoint is much less than 5 mana), and on account of the Brainstorm + fetchland being somewhere between Anticipate and Ancestral Recall in value.

Of course, if all Teferi is doing is drawing a card each turn, it's arguably not playable against combo decks, whereas Jace's brainstorm into fateseal is a self-contained gameplan in those matchups. With Teferi you actually need help from additional cards to clock them or lock them out the game. Could be that Teferi ironically works better in UWR and especially straight UW, which have plenty of win conditions.

The problem with teferi in UW is that having gideon on the typeline is inherently more valuable due to little gid's emblem, plus if your game plan revolves around planeswalkers already, defending jace is much easier.
Its definitely possible that teferi is better in UWR, but I still don't think its very good.
IME, teferi isn't actually as close to a 3-drop planeswalker as it seems. It doesn't untap the lands immediately, which gives your opponents an opportunity to resolve instants. Getting a gifts ungiven or a coco cast in response to a teferi sucks dick, and having to wait until 7 lands to cast walker + hold up knot against stuff like that is quite a bit worse when those walkers are supposed to be there to provide card advantage/hit land drops.

Good points

EDIT: After looking at the UWR lists that were playing it recently, the Azcanta synergy is pretty broken. You should be able to lock people out pretty effectively if you go all-in on it. Jace + Azcanta was already broken, but this draws a card while giving you a 2-mana Azcanta activation.

Card's gotta be worth trying, even in Esper, if you're still running Sphinx's Revelation. Speaking of which, you could even tap 2 lands in response to the trigger on your end step, letting you ramp Revelation with the card.

It's finally been locked in. Esper stream from 6-pm to midnight or so, both thursday (tomorrow) and friday nights, EST. Jim will be starting with the list I 6-2'd the classic with.

I disagree with many of your points.
WSZ still does what it always does, including making 2/2s instead of 1/1s, which as proven itself to be valuable quite often. That being said, if you greatly fear other planeswalkers, then secure may be worth playing over it.

I've mentioned this before in discord/twitch, maybe here, but settle is extremely overrated. People are not getting punished nearly as much as they should be for playing this card. I think its acceptable in the sideboard, but lets not pretend that it doesn't have problems.
Amalek has probably written the same explanation for leyline a million times by now, and its not any less true now than it has been in the past. Swapping them for push is just fundamentally not understanding what the card is there to do, I think.
I've been off sideboard threats for a really long time, maybe its time to go back to angels, maybe not. They're certainly powerful in the matchups they come in against though.

We have cryptic commands, we have counterspells, we have discard, we have snap, senith, manlands, etc, against opposing planeswalkers. Even if the other player resolves a jace against us, its not automatic lights out. We can beat active jaces fairly easily, as well as a lot of other walkers.
If I was really worried about walkers, I'd probably add a 3rd manland first, but you don't need to totally freak out every time you see a planeswalker. Some of them are not that good. If both players have a jace, but we also have azcanta, rev, esper charm, snapcaster, etc, we produce way more value than they do. The jace isn't inherently threatening.

Amalek, Where can we tune in to this stream?

10 hours or so from this post, at www.twitch.tv/jimdavismtg

http://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/jim-davis-esper-super-stream/?cb=1525395380

Probably - verdict + wrath to start with

Stream was fun, might be able to hang a little while tomorrow.

Amalek's "I usually win with this list" did include his recent classic result, which seems like a fair comparison to mtgo.

Otherwise, I think Jim's first league with the deck was a pretty poor display of what the deck is capable of. He made a lot of mistakes (not trying to bash him, the deck has a learning curve, and his second league he played much better).
While I don't love amalek's list, and I would play atleast 1 copy of push, I think jim over-reacted with the changes he made.
Jim also seems to just not like leyline as a card. If it did anything less than win every game he saw it, I would bet money he would have cut it regardless.
Its not even about "trapping" opponents, its about not getting lightning bolted on turn 10, 15, 17, 22, 29 and 34 and losing because of it.
The card is worse now because of the rule change, but its not enough to totally discount it.

Also drawing 1 land in your 7 in a 25 card deck is unlikely. Having it happen numerous times is less likely. Thats just unlucky.
Playing cantrips doesn't make this happen less often, though it may make them less punishing.
I think playing 26 lands is better for amalek's list, but lets not pretend playing serum visions is going to be magically fixing all of those hands jim drew.

I don't think most 1 landers become magically keepable if you're playing serum visions. Yes, it adds consistency, but I'm not keeping colonnade, serum, jace, cryptic, thoughtseize, verdict, charm in any universe.

Some of the games were just bad beats. His first game was just not drawing well against a bad matchup. It happens. But he made several of mistakes against tron, he made mistakes in plenty of the other games too.
He often caught the mistakes shortly after, but that doesn't fix the game. Pressing f6 and not countering a negate is unfortunate, and it is a mistake. Its not a strategic mistake, but again, that doesn't fix the game. Its hard to say that losing those games are because of the deck and not atleast in part because of pilot error.
Maybe its arrogant to say me making a different play means he's making a mistake, but I'll be arrogant here. I've played an uncountable number of games with this deck. He's played 10 (and less when he made some of those plays). Jim is a great player, but sometimes you need to play some games with a deck before you get the hang of it.

I do use push and alliance. Push is pretty useless against lightning bolt, and alliance matches up with 1 bolt. Thats not enough.
Sure, if you play a ton of wincons then leyline matters less, but most of us don't. You'll lose to burn top decking lightning bolts.

I only managed to catch the first league. IMO Jim punted quite a few. In the robots match he didn't make path snap path an option, and when he wasn't punished by drawing LK, he didn't counter the ravager. I think most of us would've won the jeskai MU, not only counting the spell snare on the negate, but also other lines.
That being said, I agree that the list feels clunky. I've been feeling the same way with 25 lands, azcanta, leyline and Jace.
I actually feel that now, more than before, we need cantrips. And I never really liked SV.
I played a little with Gideon otT, not enough to tell if it's good, but it wasn't bad. A 3 Mana Planeswalker that can be aggressive could be a thing now, alongside with Jace/Teferi.. more innovation is yet needed I feel.

Some bolts may be directed at our planeswalkers.
Maybe. It happens, it does not always happen. I believe you're also generally heavier on planeswalkers than I am. I'm currently on 2 jace, and have no plans to add any more.
A deck playing 8+ burn spells doesn't necessarily mean we have an advantage in counterspells. I'd say we almost certainly have a disadvantage in actual spells since we're likely to play more lands than they are as well.
I frankly have no idea what you mean by "changing the economy of the match" because if my leyline negates 1 targeted spell, then its gone even, and any more its produced value.
I've played with plenty of cantrips in modern. Maybe I underrate them, but you can't tell me you'd keep that hand I listed above. They make some hands feel slightly better, but they're not some magic find-exactly-what-you-need. Let me know when brainstorm is legal, and I'll be willing to reconsider.
That being said, I think we just have fundamentally different views on control decks. I'm not interested in playing gideon of the trials here. I do like that card, but I don't want it along side esper charms.

Again, I'm not in love with amalek's list either, but I don't think adding cantrips and planeswalkers is the way to go. I think you're better off playing different colors and different archtypes if thats what you're interested in.
Again, if we had actually good cantrips, I might feel differently, but serum visions is just so lackluster.

I would really like Jim to change the deck some more in the next two leagues, just to see, what he is thinking about the deck and how he would evolve it - even it is a direction I would not do - but I really like his thought process behind it and I do think, that it could improve the deck to see Jim doing it - even if you do not agree on some of the changes.

I think the biggest fear with everyone about Jim making changes is that he'd just turn it into your typical Esper midrange deck with discard and souls. I personally want to see Jim's list with Serums and his wincon of choice, but he stated several times that he thought the deck would be better off as a tap-out midrange list -- that is NOT what amalek0 signed up to hear haha.

Last but not least I would like to thank amalek for the great opportunity to see someone like Jim with this deck in action for more than a league and his chance to evolve the deck how he sees it! Thanks a lot!

Agreed. I know it was expensive to set up but it's been very very fun to be a part of, and we finally have some good content and commentary on the deck. Many thanks to both amalek0 and Jim.

ive been watching the recorded stream piecemeal. for me what stood out was the fact that nothing stood out. honestly the sample size, and the picking up any new decklist requiring some acclimation time means im not looking too closely at the results. there were some games that jim davis might have won with a different line, or he could have taken those other lines and just as easily lost all the same; however for me it was seeing if there was anything going on in this type of list that could convince me esper draw-go had something that is an obvious advantage to playing other control variants. i just didnt see it.

i wont really critique specific card choices. i can see this general gameplan of dealing with what the opponent presents then systematically cutting off their outs. if you move away from that too much then its just a different deck, which is obviously not what amalek is trying to promote.

So I went 3-0 (split first, so no 4th round opp) at FNM tonight with the following list. Not sure how helpful it is, but anyways:



R1: Bant Midrange
He had 2 lands all of game 1. Game 2 he played t1 bird, t2 Geist, Path'd my Snapcaster to chump Geist on his T3, and Quellered my Wrath, and Path'd my T5 Baneslayer too -- that was all she wrote. G3 was a odd grind where I windmill slammed Baneslayer fairly early, immediately drew the 2nd one, which got Reflector Maged, dug through about 20 cards to find no Wrath, but left Baneslayer on defense and Zenith'd for lethal after he played around Settle the Wreckage for way too many turns (I never had it in hand).

2-1, 1-0 overall

R2: Abzan Midrange
I honestly don't remember much from this match, it was your typical BGx grindfest. In game 1, I slammed Jace on T4 to minus away a Spirit from the front half of lingering Souls, and then protected him long enough to get us both topdecking on 6 lands in play vs. my Jace. Gideon came down to make quick work of every Lili he played, and forced him to play out all of his Souls from the yard before I mopped it up with Zenith and eventually Rev. Game 2 he casted multiple discard spells, but only had Souls for pressure, so I played very carefully with my Wraths and Cryptics to manage the turns until Baneslayer and Gideon killed him. Had to think for it, but a relatively easy 2-0.

2-0, 2-0 overall

R3: 8-Rack
This was the stupidest match I've ever played. He got my hand down to nothing G1 with a pair of Shrieking Afflictions in play, but I topdecked Gideon to emblem, upticked his mutavault (to protect Gid on 1 loyalty). He ended up ulting a Lili with me at -20 something life and leaving me with just a Gideon in play, so I just started attacking (accepting losing to a Dismember -- he didn't have it). Go into game 2 where early discard into Smallpox left me behind a bit, but I played and flipped an Azcanta, then a Gideon+emblem, then played draw-go with countermagic for a long time, then played Baneslayer, flashing in Snapcaster to save it from Lili minus, and won the game as a formality. G1 was insane, G2 was too easy.

2-0, 3-0 overall

---

At this point I just split (I just wanted the store cred!) and bought a 3rd Foil Snow-Covered Plains for UW (lol sorry guys). But some thoughts on the deck: I considered Serum but decided against it. The 26th land didn't seem warranted. I decided to throw in lil' Gideon due to what Jim and BloodyRabbit were saying about actually winning the game, and Gid literally made the deck function all night. Definitely wouldn't play it without him. Zenith was ok too.

As for cards that didn't seem great: Snare was very meh and I only played it because I wanted more early interaction, but not more Push/Alliance/2-mana-counters. I think one Snare might stick, but the other one's got to go -- don't know what to do with the slot tho. Another definite cut is the 3rd Field. I literally had to Field people for no reason just to fix my mana several times. I wish it weren't so hard to play, as they felt great to have, but the cost on casting ECharm and Cryptic is too much to play 3 Fields on only 25 lands.

I didn't ever play Sphere or Remand, so the jury's still out on that one.

Has modern evolved too much for a list like this to still be successful?

https://www.mtggoldfish.com/deck/596297#paper