Kommand + Snap is too good of interaction. At best you might have some split of the two so you can abuse the added deck sift in surveil, but I think in the long run you'll just come back to Snap for the synergy with Kommand. The only benefit beyond Surveil is you can activate Azcanta and pull this.
Unless you can justify cutting something else for this, I doubt it has a home here. Snap is just the biggest similarity and I'm already only running 3.
too weak imo (although i believe running less than 4 snap is a big mistake).
i mean its better than Twincast, but its just not a good card. not playable imo.
surveil is not bad (i think the value ascribed to scry 1 is 1/4 card, so scry2 is 1/2 card plus a bit of grave fuel.
i just dont think we have the time to play this. snap blocks and swings, this doesnt. how many games have i won with snap beats? a ton. this is way worse.
Couple of things:
1) Surveil is much better than scry.
2) This would be used in conjunction with snap, not as a replacement.
As for the card itself, it is amazing. It is going to be a staple in every format without question. The better question we have is what does it give grixis control?
At first glance, the card is a combination of a 2-mana Thought Scour (puts 2 cards in bin, plus itself) and snapcaster mage (without the body). Seems extremely playable in this type of deck, but as you brought up, it could be a hair too slow. However, with BGx decks becoming more popular, the meta should slow down. If that is the case, look out for this card. This is another card that absolutely crushes BGx matchups (like snap and cryptic).
I think with a lot of current builds running discard, this thing is nuts, especially in conjunction with the new surveil discard card at 2 mana.
Mission briefing says "combo card" to me more than a value play honestly. We care about the body of snapcaster and if we wanted more of them we could play dire fleet daredevil, but we don't so we aren't. So far I've only seen thought erasure as a potentially playable card for us, meanwhile I've seen several that can go into a handful of different decks. Still hoping we don't get boned on this mechanic like the last time we went to ravnica.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
PPTQ coming up tomorrow and I will be bringing Grixis control. I'll be running the Discard+Bolas version that Gods_Shadow and stokpile have played with no thoughtscours, and mine will include 2 Liliana of the Veil and as well as the 2 Rise/Falls. My spell choices are very similar to Gods_Shadow. I'm having trouble on a couple of choices in my deck as my meta-game is slightly unpredictable (we will be getting a lot of out-of-towners that I won't know). I do know that my local players usually play Tron, I'm expecting humans, and there is at least one player with RDW. I haven't seen a graveyard deck yet, but I do have some hate in the board just so I'm not caught off guard.
My first question is: 4-mana card choices?
I'm running 2 cryptics, 2 bolas, and 2 rise/fall. I would like to include 1 copy of JTMS. I'm having trouble deciding between Pia and Kirin Nalaar or Kalitas as my threat package. I haven't played with Pia and Kirin yet, so could someone elaborate on why that could be a better choice? It seems versatile if all tokens + Pia survive a turn. The biggest appeal of Kalitas to me is the lifegain + 4 toughness.
I would also like to mention that in my playtesting, with the combination of cryptic, liliana, JTMS, pia/kalitas, I sometimes run into mana-color problems (using a standard manabase with only 1 field of ruin).
My second question: 3-mana slot?
My nimble obstructionists will not be arriving in time, I would have loved them for the tron matchups =/ Because of that I am including 1 vendillion clique mainboard. Is that an ok choice or am I better taking it out for another 4-mana threat or 4th kolaghan? Clique rarely feels like a bad play but with 2 Liliana Veil and my desire to run 3 or 4 4-cmc threats, I feel like I should just use the slot for something else (would be ideal if i could find obstructionists to borrow of course)
Third question: 2-cmc slot! I don't have baby jace and that makes me sad I want more things to do on turn 2 if possible. What do you guys think are my best options? I'm including 1 Search for Azcanta, so I'm looking for 2 cards to fill that 2 cmc slot. I've seen recent discussion on young pyromancer. Even if he doesn't generate blockers immediately, I think he servers as good removal bait. Between all of the discard and recursion with Kolaghan's Command + Rise//Fall it all looks like a nice package. Am I missing any other 2 cmc choices? I'm always the kind of players who wants to put more card draw in a deck, but for this meta I think that being more active and less durdly could prove more beneficial.
Next, @Gods_Shadow, I saw in one of your lists that you had 1 copy of grim lavamancer. How did you feel about that? What does everyone else feel about that? I was looking to try it, just wanted some info on how it worked out and other's opinions.
My final question is card draw. I'm running 4 serum visions, 1 search, and 1 JTMS. Does that feel right? What are everyone's thoughts on ancestral vision as a one of? Even i cast it on turn 3-4, it feels like a comfortable buffer for it to resolve a few turns later. Being grixis control it is ideal to play active and aggressive, but sometimes we can be put on the defensive too, and sitting on the ancestral visions clock just seems comfortable, allowing us the option to player safer if we have to.
Thank you everyone so much on the recent discussions so far for this deck I've been lurking for a while and I'm excited to give it a go tomorrow!
PPTQ coming up tomorrow and I will be bringing Grixis control. I'll be running the Discard+Bolas version that Gods_Shadow and stokpile have played with no thoughtscours, and mine will include 2 Liliana of the Veil and as well as the 2 Rise/Falls. My spell choices are very similar to Gods_Shadow. I'm having trouble on a couple of choices in my deck as my meta-game is slightly unpredictable (we will be getting a lot of out-of-towners that I won't know). I do know that my local players usually play Tron, I'm expecting humans, and there is at least one player with RDW. I haven't seen a graveyard deck yet, but I do have some hate in the board just so I'm not caught off guard.
Hrmmmm. I am also playing a ptq tomorrow with grixis... that is also expecting an unusually large amount of people from out of town...
My first question is: 4-mana card choices?
I'm running 2 cryptics, 2 bolas, and 2 rise/fall. I would like to include 1 copy of JTMS. I'm having trouble deciding between Pia and Kirin Nalaar or Kalitas as my threat package. I haven't played with Pia and Kirin yet, so could someone elaborate on why that could be a better choice? It seems versatile if all tokens + Pia survive a turn. The biggest appeal of Kalitas to me is the lifegain + 4 toughness.
I would also like to mention that in my playtesting, with the combination of cryptic, liliana, JTMS, pia/kalitas, I sometimes run into mana-color problems (using a standard manabase with only 1 field of ruin).
I've found both Kalitas and PnK to be either amazing or worse than a basic forest depending on the match so I strongly believe that they should stay in the board. If you insist on them I'd go with PnK because they have the ability to be more than just a 3/4 with no text. But in all honesty I'd cut them for either the third cryptic or the JTMS that you want. Bolas is good enough of a 4-drop with a snap/Kommand engine that you really don't need much more creature based threats at that CMC.
My second question: 3-mana slot?
My nimble obstructionists will not be arriving in time, I would have loved them for the tron matchups =/ Because of that I am including 1 vendillion clique mainboard. Is that an ok choice or am I better taking it out for another 4-mana threat or 4th kolaghan? Clique rarely feels like a bad play but with 2 Liliana Veil and my desire to run 3 or 4 4-cmc threats, I feel like I should just use the slot for something else (would be ideal if i could find obstructionists to borrow of course)
Clique is bae. That is all.
Third question: 2-cmc slot! I don't have baby jace and that makes me sad I want more things to do on turn 2 if possible. What do you guys think are my best options? I'm including 1 Search for Azcanta, so I'm looking for 2 cards to fill that 2 cmc slot. I've seen recent discussion on young pyromancer. Even if he doesn't generate blockers immediately, I think he servers as good removal bait. Between all of the discard and recursion with Kolaghan's Command + Rise//Fall it all looks like a nice package. Am I missing any other 2 cmc choices? I'm always the kind of players who wants to put more card draw in a deck, but for this meta I think that being more active and less durdly could prove more beneficial.
Search likely won't be that great in such a creature heavy version of the deck so I'd suggest against that. Pyro is always fine, but again with such a heavy creature base it's not going to get you much value. There's nothing wrong with running collective brutality MD since it always does something. Another good option is mana leak, you're a lot heavier on colored requirements so it gives you another early game piece of disruption and it doesn't go dead nearly as fast as people tend to think it does.
My final question is card draw. I'm running 4 serum visions, 1 search, and 1 JTMS. Does that feel right? What are everyone's thoughts on ancestral vision as a one of? Even i cast it on turn 3-4, it feels like a comfortable buffer for it to resolve a few turns later. Being grixis control it is ideal to play active and aggressive, but sometimes we can be put on the defensive too, and sitting on the ancestral visions clock just seems comfortable, allowing us the option to player safer if we have to.
If you're going light on AV then they belong in the sideboard, it's just too hard to get them early enough to matter or chain them together with just the one copy. If you want to be a bit more aggressive then you can consider dire fleet daredevil as another mid to late game value play or liliana, the last hope.
Lastly, never be afraid to add in an extra land. Creeps and fields do a ton of work and don't get enough credit for a lot of our wins.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
Well I made top 8 of the ptq and then got clowned by dredge. I ended up beating UW miracles, esper shadow, storm, humans, and esper gifts and lost to storm before seeing the one dude on dredge in the room in the top 8. No new information sadly, just more reps with the deck against tilt. Bolas was stellar all day, the body was supremely relevant and the discard was priceless every time I got the trigger. This is all before the seven mana mode even was a consideration and I still managed to flip him 4 times throughout the day. Each time he flipped I was a bit flooded and wanted something powerful to do with my mana. Great play on turn four. Game winning play on turn fifteen.
The only change I made to my previous list was putting in two brutality in the main because there is a heavy burn presence in the area (there was at least seven of them in the room today) in place of my two scours. I never missed the scours and was never short of a hefty yard to do all the stuff with the things. Knot, Tas, Search etc always had as much food as they needed to work just by playing the game. Sort of like how you don't need to put in extra work to make tarmogoyf good, just play the game naturally and they'll work as intended.
I still hold that bolas belongs in the deck and that grixis Hard Control is a solid tier 1 deck that just doesn't have many eyes on it. Each of the matches I won were comically easy . We have answers to literally everything in the format and we have enough overlap that we can at least be 50/50 against the field with a number of match ups where we are run away favorites. It seems to me after all of this time and adding in a great value threat with bolas, if anybody is trying to play fair it's our match to lose and the unfair decks just have to hope we didn't adequately prepare. Deck is great. Bolas is bae.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
Well I made top 8 of the ptq and then got clowned by dredge. I ended up beating UW miracles, esper shadow, storm, humans, and esper gifts and lost to storm before seeing the one dude on dredge in the room in the top 8. No new information sadly, just more reps with the deck against tilt. Bolas was stellar all day, the body was supremely relevant and the discard was priceless every time I got the trigger. This is all before the seven mana mode even was a consideration and I still managed to flip him 4 times throughout the day. Each time he flipped I was a bit flooded and wanted something powerful to do with my mana. Great play on turn four. Game winning play on turn fifteen.
The only change I made to my previous list was putting in two brutality in the main because there is a heavy burn presence in the area (there was at least seven of them in the room today) in place of my two scours. I never missed the scours and was never short of a hefty yard to do all the stuff with the things. Knot, Tas, Search etc always had as much food as they needed to work just by playing the game. Sort of like how you don't need to put in extra work to make tarmogoyf good, just play the game naturally and they'll work as intended.
I still hold that bolas belongs in the deck and that grixis Hard Control is a solid tier 1 deck that just doesn't have many eyes on it. Each of the matches I won were comically easy . We have answers to literally everything in the format and we have enough overlap that we can at least be 50/50 against the field with a number of match ups where we are run away favorites. It seems to me after all of this time and adding in a great value threat with bolas, if anybody is trying to play fair it's our match to lose and the unfair decks just have to hope we didn't adequately prepare. Deck is great. Bolas is bae.
Good job!
I'm struggling against Mardu Pyromancer and Hollow One in my LGS games recently, any suggestions?
I'm struggling against Mardu Pyromancer and Hollow One in my LGS games recently, any suggestions?
Against mardu the best card you can have against them is Keranos, god of storms. Just pretend that they're jund where you want sweepers more than you want spot removal and things play out roughly the same. I cut the majority of my spot removal and go deep on sweepers to enforce the 1-for-1 trades as much as possible. So long as you play tight and don't fall miles behind or get trapped under a liliana you'll be fine.
Against hollow one you just have to hope that you don't get triple thoughtseized by inquiry. I wish I could speak to this match up more, but in the last 3 comp REL events I've played against it I've lost to the nuts on turn 1 or 2 each game and match. A few friends of mine play it and the running joke is that I still haven't played against it because turn 1-2 triple hollow one or BI pitch all my lands "randomly" don't count as games for testing purposes. It's kind of like dredge or the various glass cannon decks. Do they have the thing? Are you able to interact at all? If you can you win easily, if not you die in five minutes.
Against both decks an early tasigur or turn four Bolas is a major problem for them and can often win by themselves with very little support. So if you have hands that can make that happen you should be good.
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Holy crap, I think we just got a playable Lobotomy effect with Unmoored Ego. I'll name valakut. I'll name Urza's Mine. I'll name Ad Nauseum. Grapeshot. Prime Time. I really believe that this makes our "eat all of your win cons" board plan against combo infinitely easier. Currently we try to blow up an urza piece and surgical it or surgical their grapeshots or other targets for the decks that have only one or two win cons. This card completely removes the need to jump through hoops to make it so they are incapable of winning. Granted it doesn't do anything against turn 3 tron on the play, but not much does and alpine moon barely covers that. Never the less, the fact that it takes lands is a big deal for us.
Far from a main deck inclusion obviously, but this does make a lot of games a lot easier to win. With a pile of discard and permission this could easily end up patching the leaks we have against the non-creature based combo decks. I've mentioned before that fair decks are very favorable for us and this just might solve our problems with some combo decks. Here's a deck I'm tinkering with considering all of the spoilers and what I think the meta might look like.
Holy crap, I think we just got a playable Lobotomy effect with Unmoored Ego. I'll name valakut. I'll name Urza's Mine. I'll name Ad Nauseum. Grapeshot. Prime Time. I really believe that this makes our "eat all of your win cons" board plan against combo infinitely easier. Currently we try to blow up an urza piece and surgical it or surgical their grapeshots or other targets for the decks that have only one or two win cons. This card completely removes the need to jump through hoops to make it so they are incapable of winning. Granted it doesn't do anything against turn 3 tron on the play, but not much does and alpine moon barely covers that. Never the less, the fact that it takes lands is a big deal for us.
Far from a main deck inclusion obviously, but this does make a lot of games a lot easier to win. With a pile of discard and permission this could easily end up patching the leaks we have against the non-creature based combo decks. I've mentioned before that fair decks are very favorable for us and this just might solve our problems with some combo decks. Here's a deck I'm tinkering with considering all of the spoilers and what I think the meta might look like.
unmoored ego is a premium sibeboard card for us for sure. but i guess I wouldn't play a full set along with an extra copy of surgical, maybe a 1-2 split would do just fine. I would never walk out without at least 2 dedicated spot for graveyard hate.
and re: the previous post, I think keranos is a little too slow for mardu pyromancer, maybe its a good idea for me to run 2 copies of electrolyze ?
unmoored ego is a premium sibeboard card for us for sure. but i guess I wouldn't play a full set along with an extra copy of surgical, maybe a 1-2 split would do just fine. I would never walk out without at least 2 dedicated spot for graveyard hate.
and re: the previous post, I think keranos is a little too slow for mardu pyromancer, maybe its a good idea for me to run 2 copies of electrolyze ?
I like that Ego can still act as grave hate, even if you only get 3/4 bloodghasts or amalgams, the ones that can hang around are VERY manageable. Not to mention that we can always snap Ego if we really want to.
Keranos is definitely not too slow against mardu. We have enough business to manage the game until he can come down and if he does get hit with a thoughtseize, he does count as a creature in the yard so we can just Kommand him right back. Don't worry about activating him into a proper creature, it's just an unstoppable value engine that only dies to celestial purge which I doubt they are going to run.
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I'm almost certain that the meta is going to have to settle around the idea that Ego and Trophy exist and that might push some decks out of the meta right quick and in a hurry. At that point Tron might become like Dredge in that if the meta forgets it it can make a small surge and spike a small event.
Even against Tron when you have the draw, I think you'll find you can snipe their last land before they solidify. T3 Tron is below 50% if I'm not mistaken, so all you need is to have ego in hand and most games you should be able to delay Tron. There is, however the issue of Warping Wail, but that's adding more hoops for them to complete Tron in which, I think, you have a game.
I just wrote up a post to explain why all of our potential complaints against Ego (namely the cmc) are either not important or not worth considering when you actually acknowledge the context in which you'll be casting it. But it did end up being the size of a regular article, which I am prone to doing I admit, so I'll just sum it up real quick and post the entirety later if people happen to be interested.
The card disadvantage is a complete nonissue. When you side the card in you don't care about card advantage, you are preventing your opponent from winning the game and that is worth far more than a single card as evidence by us trying to field+surgical tron. The speed is also a nonissue because either we have no options before turn three or this is just a "medium-fine" option that will buy us several turns at minimum to address the real problem.
Again this is a super condensed version of my thoughts on the card, but I am very insistent that we all put our focus on working with the card and seeing if there is anything else we can do to build a game plan around it post board against combo decks and strategies that we are unfavored against.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
Is there a place we can find your mammoth sized post?
I'm sure it'll be easy to find a spot in the deck if you're having regular matches against Valakut, Tron, or KCI. It's all a matter of where that hate balances out. Are we going to dedicate 4 SB slots right away to send a message to the meta? Are we going to test the waters with 1 then up the numbers? I'm sure many will be mixed on how to approach that part and it will have to do with their current meta.
I have zero (seriously) of the three mentioned decks in my meta, so even though I'm picking up Ego, I won't be listing them right away.
Is there a place we can find your mammoth sized post?
I'm sure it'll be easy to find a spot in the deck if you're having regular matches against Valakut, Tron, or KCI. It's all a matter of where that hate balances out. Are we going to dedicate 4 SB slots right away to send a message to the meta? Are we going to test the waters with 1 then up the numbers? I'm sure many will be mixed on how to approach that part and it will have to do with their current meta.
I have zero (seriously) of the three mentioned decks in my meta, so even though I'm picking up Ego, I won't be listing them right away.
1) Seems silly to test a card by playing 1 in the Sideboard. If you want to test it you should run multiple so you actually draw it (and draw it early!)
2) I live in Minneapolis right by Universe Games. Do you ever play during the week?
Is there a place we can find your mammoth sized post?
I'm sure it'll be easy to find a spot in the deck if you're having regular matches against Valakut, Tron, or KCI. It's all a matter of where that hate balances out. Are we going to dedicate 4 SB slots right away to send a message to the meta? Are we going to test the waters with 1 then up the numbers? I'm sure many will be mixed on how to approach that part and it will have to do with their current meta.
I have zero (seriously) of the three mentioned decks in my meta, so even though I'm picking up Ego, I won't be listing them right away.
No I don't have it posted somewhere else online. As much as I'd like to, I don't write for any major sites. If you're interested I can PM it to you, pretty sure there's isn't a practical size limit on PM's.
1) Seems silly to test a card by playing 1 in the Sideboard. If you want to test it you should run multiple so you actually draw it (and draw it early!)
A better way to test one card specifically is to put it right on top of your deck after you shuffle up for a game. You'll always have it right when you want it and that will tell you right quick whether or not it's as good as you think it is. You learn if it's effective right away or if you find yourself having to craft a game plan around it. Then you can play a normal game and on turn seven or so you put it into your hand rather than drawing a random card to see how well it plays in the mid to late game.
Granted this isn't "natural" testing, but that's not the point. If you are only interested in testing exactly one card in exactly one match up then this is the best way to find out a cards worth in game without having to play out hundreds of matches.
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And on that day, Garfield said unto the world "Go ye forth and durdle!"
So far, i feel like Dispel is the only counterspell efficient enough to stop Collected Company. Izzet Staticaster has a fair amount of targets (wanderer, thalia, hierarch, selfless spirit, rattlechains, phantasmal image), but unless we start running heavy targeted discard mainboard ( I know you are running 4 or so, Gods_Shadow, which probably helps you quite a bit), this matchup seems horrendous for us.
Does anybody have secret tech i'm not thinking about? am at my witt's end tbh.
Against any cavern/vial deck I cut all of my permission or at the very least I cut my cryptics. They're the type of aggro deck that wants you to have a glut of spot removal rather than sweepers with the main problem being that Kommand isn't a reliable doom blade. You want to approach the spirits match the same way you would traditional affinity and burn. That is to say don't get fancy and don't try to eek out that extra value, just cast your spells. You want to dump you hand as fast as they dump theirs and respect CoCo as long as you can. If you're able to stop the first CoCo your natural card advantage will get you ahead. If you're on discard prioritize casting it over removal to pull coco from their hand because that and GoST are the only good cards in their deck. Thought Erasure is going to be a big help against them when it comes out to let you take their two good cards with value added and not hurting you.
I agree that you do want dispel in your deck post board specifically for company and I'd bring in all the copies I have. Knot is fine on the play, but still less than ideal because of cavern/vial making it hard to find a live target. This is also another match up where Bolas is sweet because he is going to be bigger than everything they have, gets another card out of their hand and being able to cast him with a bolt for a potential queller is very easy to engineer.
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Unless you can justify cutting something else for this, I doubt it has a home here. Snap is just the biggest similarity and I'm already only running 3.
"Reveal a Dragon"
Couple of things:
1) Surveil is much better than scry.
2) This would be used in conjunction with snap, not as a replacement.
As for the card itself, it is amazing. It is going to be a staple in every format without question. The better question we have is what does it give grixis control?
At first glance, the card is a combination of a 2-mana Thought Scour (puts 2 cards in bin, plus itself) and snapcaster mage (without the body). Seems extremely playable in this type of deck, but as you brought up, it could be a hair too slow. However, with BGx decks becoming more popular, the meta should slow down. If that is the case, look out for this card. This is another card that absolutely crushes BGx matchups (like snap and cryptic).
I think with a lot of current builds running discard, this thing is nuts, especially in conjunction with the new surveil discard card at 2 mana.
PPTQ coming up tomorrow and I will be bringing Grixis control. I'll be running the Discard+Bolas version that Gods_Shadow and stokpile have played with no thoughtscours, and mine will include 2 Liliana of the Veil and as well as the 2 Rise/Falls. My spell choices are very similar to Gods_Shadow. I'm having trouble on a couple of choices in my deck as my meta-game is slightly unpredictable (we will be getting a lot of out-of-towners that I won't know). I do know that my local players usually play Tron, I'm expecting humans, and there is at least one player with RDW. I haven't seen a graveyard deck yet, but I do have some hate in the board just so I'm not caught off guard.
My first question is: 4-mana card choices?
I'm running 2 cryptics, 2 bolas, and 2 rise/fall. I would like to include 1 copy of JTMS. I'm having trouble deciding between Pia and Kirin Nalaar or Kalitas as my threat package. I haven't played with Pia and Kirin yet, so could someone elaborate on why that could be a better choice? It seems versatile if all tokens + Pia survive a turn. The biggest appeal of Kalitas to me is the lifegain + 4 toughness.
I would also like to mention that in my playtesting, with the combination of cryptic, liliana, JTMS, pia/kalitas, I sometimes run into mana-color problems (using a standard manabase with only 1 field of ruin).
My second question: 3-mana slot?
My nimble obstructionists will not be arriving in time, I would have loved them for the tron matchups =/ Because of that I am including 1 vendillion clique mainboard. Is that an ok choice or am I better taking it out for another 4-mana threat or 4th kolaghan? Clique rarely feels like a bad play but with 2 Liliana Veil and my desire to run 3 or 4 4-cmc threats, I feel like I should just use the slot for something else (would be ideal if i could find obstructionists to borrow of course)
Third question: 2-cmc slot! I don't have baby jace and that makes me sad
Next, @Gods_Shadow, I saw in one of your lists that you had 1 copy of grim lavamancer. How did you feel about that? What does everyone else feel about that? I was looking to try it, just wanted some info on how it worked out and other's opinions.
My final question is card draw. I'm running 4 serum visions, 1 search, and 1 JTMS. Does that feel right? What are everyone's thoughts on ancestral vision as a one of? Even i cast it on turn 3-4, it feels like a comfortable buffer for it to resolve a few turns later. Being grixis control it is ideal to play active and aggressive, but sometimes we can be put on the defensive too, and sitting on the ancestral visions clock just seems comfortable, allowing us the option to player safer if we have to.
Thank you everyone so much on the recent discussions so far for this deck
Hrmmmm. I am also playing a ptq tomorrow with grixis... that is also expecting an unusually large amount of people from out of town...
I've found both Kalitas and PnK to be either amazing or worse than a basic forest depending on the match so I strongly believe that they should stay in the board. If you insist on them I'd go with PnK because they have the ability to be more than just a 3/4 with no text. But in all honesty I'd cut them for either the third cryptic or the JTMS that you want. Bolas is good enough of a 4-drop with a snap/Kommand engine that you really don't need much more creature based threats at that CMC.
Clique is bae. That is all.
Search likely won't be that great in such a creature heavy version of the deck so I'd suggest against that. Pyro is always fine, but again with such a heavy creature base it's not going to get you much value. There's nothing wrong with running collective brutality MD since it always does something. Another good option is mana leak, you're a lot heavier on colored requirements so it gives you another early game piece of disruption and it doesn't go dead nearly as fast as people tend to think it does.
If you're going light on AV then they belong in the sideboard, it's just too hard to get them early enough to matter or chain them together with just the one copy. If you want to be a bit more aggressive then you can consider dire fleet daredevil as another mid to late game value play or liliana, the last hope.
Lastly, never be afraid to add in an extra land. Creeps and fields do a ton of work and don't get enough credit for a lot of our wins.
The only change I made to my previous list was putting in two brutality in the main because there is a heavy burn presence in the area (there was at least seven of them in the room today) in place of my two scours. I never missed the scours and was never short of a hefty yard to do all the stuff with the things. Knot, Tas, Search etc always had as much food as they needed to work just by playing the game. Sort of like how you don't need to put in extra work to make tarmogoyf good, just play the game naturally and they'll work as intended.
I still hold that bolas belongs in the deck and that grixis Hard Control is a solid tier 1 deck that just doesn't have many eyes on it. Each of the matches I won were comically easy . We have answers to literally everything in the format and we have enough overlap that we can at least be 50/50 against the field with a number of match ups where we are run away favorites. It seems to me after all of this time and adding in a great value threat with bolas, if anybody is trying to play fair it's our match to lose and the unfair decks just have to hope we didn't adequately prepare. Deck is great. Bolas is bae.
Good job!
I'm struggling against Mardu Pyromancer and Hollow One in my LGS games recently, any suggestions?
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | URPhoenixUR | UWMiraclesUW |GBRJundGBR | UBFaeriesUB | UBWAd NauseumUBW |GBRWBlueless ShadowGBRW |
MTGA
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | UTempoU
Against mardu the best card you can have against them is Keranos, god of storms. Just pretend that they're jund where you want sweepers more than you want spot removal and things play out roughly the same. I cut the majority of my spot removal and go deep on sweepers to enforce the 1-for-1 trades as much as possible. So long as you play tight and don't fall miles behind or get trapped under a liliana you'll be fine.
Against hollow one you just have to hope that you don't get triple thoughtseized by inquiry. I wish I could speak to this match up more, but in the last 3 comp REL events I've played against it I've lost to the nuts on turn 1 or 2 each game and match. A few friends of mine play it and the running joke is that I still haven't played against it because turn 1-2 triple hollow one or BI pitch all my lands "randomly" don't count as games for testing purposes. It's kind of like dredge or the various glass cannon decks. Do they have the thing? Are you able to interact at all? If you can you win easily, if not you die in five minutes.
Against both decks an early tasigur or turn four Bolas is a major problem for them and can often win by themselves with very little support. So if you have hands that can make that happen you should be good.
Far from a main deck inclusion obviously, but this does make a lot of games a lot easier to win. With a pile of discard and permission this could easily end up patching the leaks we have against the non-creature based combo decks. I've mentioned before that fair decks are very favorable for us and this just might solve our problems with some combo decks. Here's a deck I'm tinkering with considering all of the spoilers and what I think the meta might look like.
2 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Vendilion Clique
Removal
1 Fatal Push
3 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Dreadbore
2 Terminate
Interaciton
1 Countersquall
3 Cryptic Command
2 Logic Knot
4 Thought Erasure
4 Ancestral Vision
Mana
1 Blood Crypt
1 Darkslick Shores
3 Field of Ruin
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Spirebluff Canal
2 Steam Vents
2 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Collective Brutality
1 Countersquall
1 Damnation
2 Disdainful Stroke
1 Dispel
1 Fulminator Mage
4 Unmoored Ego
1 Surgical Extraction
EDIT: BAH! Darkvoidman got there first!
unmoored ego is a premium sibeboard card for us for sure. but i guess I wouldn't play a full set along with an extra copy of surgical, maybe a 1-2 split would do just fine. I would never walk out without at least 2 dedicated spot for graveyard hate.
and re: the previous post, I think keranos is a little too slow for mardu pyromancer, maybe its a good idea for me to run 2 copies of electrolyze ?
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | URPhoenixUR | UWMiraclesUW |GBRJundGBR | UBFaeriesUB | UBWAd NauseumUBW |GBRWBlueless ShadowGBRW |
MTGA
UBRGrixis ControlUBR | UTempoU
I like that Ego can still act as grave hate, even if you only get 3/4 bloodghasts or amalgams, the ones that can hang around are VERY manageable. Not to mention that we can always snap Ego if we really want to.
Keranos is definitely not too slow against mardu. We have enough business to manage the game until he can come down and if he does get hit with a thoughtseize, he does count as a creature in the yard so we can just Kommand him right back. Don't worry about activating him into a proper creature, it's just an unstoppable value engine that only dies to celestial purge which I doubt they are going to run.
Even against Tron when you have the draw, I think you'll find you can snipe their last land before they solidify. T3 Tron is below 50% if I'm not mistaken, so all you need is to have ego in hand and most games you should be able to delay Tron. There is, however the issue of Warping Wail, but that's adding more hoops for them to complete Tron in which, I think, you have a game.
"Reveal a Dragon"
The card disadvantage is a complete nonissue. When you side the card in you don't care about card advantage, you are preventing your opponent from winning the game and that is worth far more than a single card as evidence by us trying to field+surgical tron. The speed is also a nonissue because either we have no options before turn three or this is just a "medium-fine" option that will buy us several turns at minimum to address the real problem.
Again this is a super condensed version of my thoughts on the card, but I am very insistent that we all put our focus on working with the card and seeing if there is anything else we can do to build a game plan around it post board against combo decks and strategies that we are unfavored against.
I'm sure it'll be easy to find a spot in the deck if you're having regular matches against Valakut, Tron, or KCI. It's all a matter of where that hate balances out. Are we going to dedicate 4 SB slots right away to send a message to the meta? Are we going to test the waters with 1 then up the numbers? I'm sure many will be mixed on how to approach that part and it will have to do with their current meta.
I have zero (seriously) of the three mentioned decks in my meta, so even though I'm picking up Ego, I won't be listing them right away.
"Reveal a Dragon"
1) Seems silly to test a card by playing 1 in the Sideboard. If you want to test it you should run multiple so you actually draw it (and draw it early!)
2) I live in Minneapolis right by Universe Games. Do you ever play during the week?
No I don't have it posted somewhere else online. As much as I'd like to, I don't write for any major sites. If you're interested I can PM it to you, pretty sure there's isn't a practical size limit on PM's.
A better way to test one card specifically is to put it right on top of your deck after you shuffle up for a game. You'll always have it right when you want it and that will tell you right quick whether or not it's as good as you think it is. You learn if it's effective right away or if you find yourself having to craft a game plan around it. Then you can play a normal game and on turn seven or so you put it into your hand rather than drawing a random card to see how well it plays in the mid to late game.
Granted this isn't "natural" testing, but that's not the point. If you are only interested in testing exactly one card in exactly one match up then this is the best way to find out a cards worth in game without having to play out hundreds of matches.
Against any cavern/vial deck I cut all of my permission or at the very least I cut my cryptics. They're the type of aggro deck that wants you to have a glut of spot removal rather than sweepers with the main problem being that Kommand isn't a reliable doom blade. You want to approach the spirits match the same way you would traditional affinity and burn. That is to say don't get fancy and don't try to eek out that extra value, just cast your spells. You want to dump you hand as fast as they dump theirs and respect CoCo as long as you can. If you're able to stop the first CoCo your natural card advantage will get you ahead. If you're on discard prioritize casting it over removal to pull coco from their hand because that and GoST are the only good cards in their deck. Thought Erasure is going to be a big help against them when it comes out to let you take their two good cards with value added and not hurting you.
I agree that you do want dispel in your deck post board specifically for company and I'd bring in all the copies I have. Knot is fine on the play, but still less than ideal because of cavern/vial making it hard to find a live target. This is also another match up where Bolas is sweet because he is going to be bigger than everything they have, gets another card out of their hand and being able to cast him with a bolt for a potential queller is very easy to engineer.