I forget if this has been discussed before, but what do we take out vs burn? I know it should be a good matchup but somehow lost against it twice today at a pptq (no mainboard timely though).
Is the nahiri/emrakul combo just too clunky? or do we need the clock? is AV too slow? Remand is bad, wraths are bad (well anger is good if they play wild nacatl I guess), electrolyze is meh, AV is bad unless you have it opening hand, nahiri/emrakul is clunky.
Just not sure which mediocre cards I should be keeping in. Again I know this should be a good matchup but I'm probably just salty from losing to it twice today.
Honestly geist seems like a great clock against burn, cheaper than nahiri and they fetch-shock all the time, haven't tested it out a lot though.
It depends on your list. The list that only has one Lightning Helix isn't favored, the one with 3 should be and post board it gets better.
Vs Burn: Remand isn't very good. Cryptic probably a bit slow. Both can come out. You want Timely Reinforcements and more cheap counter spells like Dispel and Negate. You could shave a Vision or two, since they are a little slow to make extra room.
I think I'll definitely try some of those UR fastlands, getting turn 1 bolt or a vision spell for free seems very good. They might just replace Sulfur Falls
As for burn, it's a favourable matchup if you can close the game quickly, so I think ax92's idea of bringing in Geist is pretty good. We have the best tools to beat burn with good lifegain spells, countermagic and a boatload of removal, but if you can't back that up with pressure they will just out-topdeck you
I think in a velocity deck like Jeskai Nahiri you just have to play at least UR fastland. Painless turn 1 Bolt or Vision(s).
Pretty much like Jund, Blackcleave Cliffs is bread and butter of the deck, it allows you to run smoothly within the first turns of them game, basically the most important ones.
The problem of hitting Turn 4 Nahiri im not concerned about. Again, in a velocity deck, you don't have trouble hitting 4th land drop untapped, if you played your lands correctly in the first 3 turns.
In any case, test will truly show if this land can makes us better. I'm inclined to believe that the upside of not dealing a single(or so) point of damage within the first 3 turns of the game is better than playing turn 4 Nahiri. It just the way Modern goes. And it's not like you won´t ever play Nahiri on turn 4, it just will come about more often than before.
I think any build playing nahiri should not be playing any, as 4 mana is too important to hit.
For more flash/snapcaster - bolt based builds, the U/R one is likely going to see play.
For what it's worth:
I play UB Faeries in a 24-land configuration, with the top of the curve being a 3-3 split of 4cmc spells in Mistbind Clique and Cryptic Command.
4 of my lands are Darkslick Shores, and the fact they come in like Salt Marshes after the third land really REALLY blows, even if they're great for turn 1 thoughtseize with minimal life loss. You can't do Mistbind-Cryptic mindgames with 3 untapped lands and a tapped Darkslick Shores, for obvious reasons.
Now, while you guys don't exactly have the Thoughtseize lifeloss minimization problem (that's something more in common between Faeries and Jund, especially with Jund's well-documented love of Blackcleave Cliffs), what is common between us is that if we can help it, we should never play a land that functionally imitates an Invasion tapland. The only exceptions are the WWK/BFZ/OGW manlands because being a manland is well worth the tradeoff of coming in tapped (why play Coastal Tower when Celestial Colonnade does all that on top of imitating Serra Angel? Why play Salt Marsh when Creeping Tar Pit is all that on top of being a 3/2 unblockable for 1UB?), but past that there's the crucial tempo development of getting to 4 lands untapped, and having lands that fall flat at that crucial development point can really blow.
Though, on the plus, Nahiri can just cycle dead fastlands for you once she's up and running, so maybe it'll work out better than expected?
Anyway that's just my neighboring 2 cents on the matter.
It's not like you guys are UR Delver where playing fastlands fits in with the deck's ground hugging curve (with the exception of Grixis which wants fetches to fuel Delve).
thanks for the advice everyone, that's basically how I was boarding. Just didn't get there I suppose, another pptq next weekend so may post results from that if I don't scrub out again.
on the plus side I bought my third AV.
Sulfur falls can be super awkward at times, I can definitely see cutting one or both or them for the fastland.
I have played faeries a good deal in the past, and darkslick shores was probably my first cut, and I've never looked back.
I have a slightly different philosophy on the deck than a lot of the people in the current modern thread, which I won't get into here, but faeries is only 2 colors and has so many duals that darkslick shores is not a necesary evil. Secluded glen, river of tears, drowned catacombs, choked estuary, shocks, fetches, bfz duals, basics, urborg, utility lands, cavern of souls, tarpits, mutavaults, filters, etc, etc, its very easy to fill up your mana base with lands that aren't darkslick shores.
I suppose a major difference for nahiri is that I play my visions in the side (I'm basically pre-boarded against aggro), meaning theres fewer cards than need the untapped land turn 1.
Nonetheless, I feel this deck revolves around turn 4 too much to make me comfortable with fast lands. turn 4 is when nahiri comes online, when snapcaster really comes into stride, when we cast wrath of gods, etc. I suppose 1 fastland is probably fine, but I would certainly not play more than that, and even 1 I'm hesitant to include.
What's all this crazy talk about fastlands messing up a T4 Nahiri, if you are running 1-3 of these (I doubt I'll be running more than 2) there should be very few instances where this hinders you. You do realize that we don't have many 3 mana spells, right? I've played Seachrome Coast since the Ancestral Vision unban and never once been punished by it. One or two lands will rarely be punishing you BUT even if you do get punished occassionally that is made up for the life saved in the early turns.
It's not about T4 Nahiri but it's essential to have untapped lands when you resolve you AV or when you have to cast that 4 mana sweepers etc.
I'd argue you don't need to (or shouldn't be running) any 4 mana sweepers.
It was just an example. The point being untapped lands are important because they help you maximize your AVs, enable you to Snap+flash, activate Colonnade and that all starts with 4 mana+ turns. Basically, it's important to have the ability to play ''2 spells'' in a turn cycle but I'm sure you already knew that. Fastlands are great but they often shine in a less mana hungry decks.
I consider Jund to be one of the most mana hungry decks and they are all over these type of lands and Grixis Delver is mana hungry too and has no problem with them. And as has been said, I've been playing Seachrome Coast for months with no issue. You can play at least two of these lands and they will help you much more than they will hurt you.
I think we are running into an dead end right now. The metagame has shifted and is very poor for us us right now. With the rise of eldrazi, RG Titan, abzan and dredge there are so many matchups I don't like. Unfortunately I have no idea to make them substantially better. Especially RG Titan. Ideas?
If you were under the impression that we've only just run into trouble, I would like to remind you of the 3 years that we were tier 3 and best. We still played the deck, and many of us had local success with it. A change in the meta just means we need to tune our deck and do things a little differently. It's not like there's a ridiculous amount of Tron, Amulet, Ad Nauseam at every event. Our deck is better now than it has ever been, so we're not going to drift slowly into the distance and never be seen again.
The best way to beat difficult matchups is to play well. It sounds like a cop out response, but that's really the best option. We have most of the tools required to win, but using them correctly is the difficult part.
I'm playing jeskai quite a while and I know what you mean. I'm not denying making mistakes but since the release of Nahiri many things have changed. For example RG breach is starting to become more and more popular and I'm struggling to make this matchup better but there's only so much you can do. Have you got a good idea how to approach the mu except for "playing better"?
..my take on the issue of "playing better" and fine-tuning of the deck is to identify as good as possible what the ideal game plan is against the bad match-ups. Only by understanding what the opponent is trying to accomplish with his (deck-)strategy we are able to counteract and eventually take the over the game.
As far as I can deduce we have atm a very strong game plan against creature decks but a somewhat weak spot when it comes to strategies relying on powerful spells (as described by many others in the form of Breach, Ad Nauseam, Tron, etc.). This is where I do not like our countermagic, as a way to disrupt the opponents game plan - our Spell Snares, Remands, Mana Leaks just do not present strong enough ways to interact. I`d rather have Logic Knot, Negates and Cryptics here..
One opponent at GP Lille had Delay in his SB, which was an interesting take - I wouldn't run it, but it is at least a fresh idea...
I think most of the problems people are having boil down to three things:
1) Not playing well (and being unwilling to improve or recognize the problems)
2) Showing up with a poorly tuned 75 (because they have certain pet cards that they refuse to let go of)
3) Running into variance and/or bad match-ups
If you are having trouble, ask yourself which of these things are giving you the most trouble. But do it empirically. WRITE THINGS DOWN. Ask questions to stronger players and BE HONEST AND HUMBLE don't try to "save face" just be honest at what you are unsure about.
I'm playing jeskai quite a while and I know what you mean. I'm not denying making mistakes but since the release of Nahiri many things have changed. For example RG breach is starting to become more and more popular and I'm struggling to make this matchup better but there's only so much you can do. Have you got a good idea how to approach the mu except for "playing better"?
..my take on the issue of "playing better" and fine-tuning of the deck is to identify as good as possible what the ideal game plan is against the bad match-ups. Only by understanding what the opponent is trying to accomplish with his (deck-)strategy we are able to counteract and eventually take the over the game.
As far as I can deduce we have atm a very strong game plan against creature decks but a somewhat weak spot when it comes to strategies relying on powerful spells (as described by many others in the form of Breach, Ad Nauseam, Tron, etc.). This is where I do not like our countermagic, as a way to disrupt the opponents game plan - our Spell Snares, Remands, Mana Leaks just do not present strong enough ways to interact. I`d rather have Logic Knot, Negates and Cryptics here..
One opponent at GP Lille had Delay in his SB, which was an interesting take - I wouldn't run it, but it is at least a fresh idea...
Ad Nauseam is very winnable (sideboard dependent) and Tron can be hated if it thrives in your local meta.
Ad Nauseam is very winnable (sideboard dependent) and Tron can be hated if it thrives in your local meta.
..sure, I don't claim its unwinnable - a lot of players acknowledge that.
still, it is where your bulletpoints 1+2 are the most important, which is why we are debating over and over how to improve spell- and skill-wise
Ad Nauseam is very winnable (sideboard dependent) and Tron can be hated if it thrives in your local meta.
..sure, I don't claim its unwinnable - a lot of players acknowledge that.
still, it is where your bulletpoints 1+2 are the most important, which is why we are debating over and over how to improve spell- and skill-wise
I haven't seen anyone debate how to improve "skill-wise". Are people doing that here? Spell-wise you need to identify which decks you are likely to face and which sideboard cards are going to help lead to the most victories.
You might want to check out my list from GP Guangzhou and try to figure out why I picked the cards that I did. That would be a good thought exercise.
So, depending on your local metagame...it might be worth going balls deep on an anti-RG Breach build of Jeskai Nahiri. If nothing else, it'll be decent for experimenting and "data-collection."
Add more V-Cliques, Geists, Spell Quellers, and Aven Mindcensors. IMO some kind of flash build would be best vs. combo decks. Quellers, Cliques, and Geists are the main ones I'd look to experiment with (in larger numbers) if I'm hellbent on beating those decks; they're disruptive and provides a clock.
Reprints the one card that people point to when saying that art objectifies women.
Well done Wizards.
Liliana does not objectify women in any way at all. We have gotten to a point in our society that every single picture of a women must be objectifying a women in some negative way......blah blah blah.. That is not the case. (((Sarcasm)))Picture of a girl drinking a milk shake, must be sex related and putting women down, picture of girl sitting on a beach, picture of a girl driving a car, picture of a girl on the moon at a new space station.)))
You have a picture of an attractive strong power women who girls dress up as for anime conventions. What more do you want? The picture is fine, happy to see a reprint. Sick of of seeing people claim that everything in existence must be putting women down. Then all I have to do is replace the word "women" with anything else to get the same mentality; fish, cats, arabs, blacks, jews, men, environment, whites, chinese, old people, etc. It doesn't matter what word I put in. Stop sucking life out of everything man. That artwork of her is awesome. Stop putting stuff down man. Just stop. If the picture was really as negative as you claim she would totally nude, in a kitchen, making sandwiches and giving blow jobs. Her abilities would be horrible as well. +1 do nothing -2 do nothing -6 do nothing. Instead liliana of the veil is an amazing planeswalker comparable to jace, the mind sculpter with great art to appreciate.
My suggestion listen to some comedy radio for a while, pandora is free, youtube is free there is something out there for you. ***** go make fun of somebody. The whole world is so serious and campaigning for some cause, or someones rights, everything is a hate crime, racist, sexist. blah blah blah.
"O no mcdonalds must be slandering a hate crime against skinny people every time they make a big mac." hahaha jeeze You're just someone perpetuating another groups negative perspective that they've made you believe is correct. Look at the picture for a hour and tell me what's wrong with it? I don't see anything.
I have heard vague rumors of a moustache-dispensing vending machine in a distant laundromat, across the street from a tattoo parlor. However, this information is shaky, and time is of the essence.
On the subject of the fastland: I'm very interested in trying it purely to offset the awkwardness of openers with Celestial Colonnade + Sulfur Falls, or Sulfur Falls only + Serum Visions. Drawing it as the fourth land will be awkward, but I think the benefit of more keepable opening hands should (maybe?) outweigh the one-turn delay in going from 3 to 4 mana.
So, depending on your local metagame...it might be worth going balls deep on an anti-RG Breach build of Jeskai Nahiri. If nothing else, it'll be decent for experimenting and "data-collection."
Add more V-Cliques, Geists, Spell Quellers, and Aven Mindcensors. IMO some kind of flash build would be best vs. combo decks. Quellers, Cliques, and Geists are the main ones I'd look to experiment with (in larger numbers) if I'm hellbent on beating those decks; they're disruptive and provides a clock.
This literally made me laugh out loud largely because people get so mad bringing up this type of thing here. Geist of Saint Traft is alright, but you really don't want to see too many of them so trying to find the right number can be awkward. Clique is marginally useful as disruption but has a decent clock. The information you get from Clique is usually the most important thing though. Spell Queller is not good in this matchup in my opinion. At best, you snag a Farseek, Sakura-Tribe Elder or Search for Tomorrow. That is not where the party is because those aren't generally the spells that matter. I mean they are, but you'll never counter enough of them for it to matter because they're so dense on the number of ramp spells. Then there's the question of how many Aven Mindcensor would you really want to play? It's not bad at all, but let's not forget that RG Breach decks play more actual threats out of the sideboard in games 2 and 3. Not to mention all those threats make Aven Mindcensor look like a waste of time. Going flash is a nice idea, but I don't think it significantly improves your chances on its own. You really just need to identify your best cards against them and use them appropriately. Some number of Geist of Saint Traft (two for me), Spreading Seas and Cryptic Command (already in the main) have been pretty good for me.
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It depends on your list. The list that only has one Lightning Helix isn't favored, the one with 3 should be and post board it gets better.
Modern: R Skred -- WBG Melira Co -- URW Nahiri Control
Legacy: R Mono Red Burn -- UWB Stoneblade
Commander: R Krenko, Mob Boss -- WUBRG Scion of the Ur-Dragon -- WUBRG Maze’s End
Other: R No Rares Red (Standard) -- URC Izzet Tron (Pauper)
As for burn, it's a favourable matchup if you can close the game quickly, so I think ax92's idea of bringing in Geist is pretty good. We have the best tools to beat burn with good lifegain spells, countermagic and a boatload of removal, but if you can't back that up with pressure they will just out-topdeck you
Pretty much like Jund, Blackcleave Cliffs is bread and butter of the deck, it allows you to run smoothly within the first turns of them game, basically the most important ones.
The problem of hitting Turn 4 Nahiri im not concerned about. Again, in a velocity deck, you don't have trouble hitting 4th land drop untapped, if you played your lands correctly in the first 3 turns.
In any case, test will truly show if this land can makes us better. I'm inclined to believe that the upside of not dealing a single(or so) point of damage within the first 3 turns of the game is better than playing turn 4 Nahiri. It just the way Modern goes. And it's not like you won´t ever play Nahiri on turn 4, it just will come about more often than before.
For what it's worth:
I play UB Faeries in a 24-land configuration, with the top of the curve being a 3-3 split of 4cmc spells in Mistbind Clique and Cryptic Command.
4 of my lands are Darkslick Shores, and the fact they come in like Salt Marshes after the third land really REALLY blows, even if they're great for turn 1 thoughtseize with minimal life loss. You can't do Mistbind-Cryptic mindgames with 3 untapped lands and a tapped Darkslick Shores, for obvious reasons.
Now, while you guys don't exactly have the Thoughtseize lifeloss minimization problem (that's something more in common between Faeries and Jund, especially with Jund's well-documented love of Blackcleave Cliffs), what is common between us is that if we can help it, we should never play a land that functionally imitates an Invasion tapland. The only exceptions are the WWK/BFZ/OGW manlands because being a manland is well worth the tradeoff of coming in tapped (why play Coastal Tower when Celestial Colonnade does all that on top of imitating Serra Angel? Why play Salt Marsh when Creeping Tar Pit is all that on top of being a 3/2 unblockable for 1UB?), but past that there's the crucial tempo development of getting to 4 lands untapped, and having lands that fall flat at that crucial development point can really blow.
Though, on the plus, Nahiri can just cycle dead fastlands for you once she's up and running, so maybe it'll work out better than expected?
Anyway that's just my neighboring 2 cents on the matter.
It's not like you guys are UR Delver where playing fastlands fits in with the deck's ground hugging curve (with the exception of Grixis which wants fetches to fuel Delve).
on the plus side I bought my third AV.
Sulfur falls can be super awkward at times, I can definitely see cutting one or both or them for the fastland.
I have a slightly different philosophy on the deck than a lot of the people in the current modern thread, which I won't get into here, but faeries is only 2 colors and has so many duals that darkslick shores is not a necesary evil. Secluded glen, river of tears, drowned catacombs, choked estuary, shocks, fetches, bfz duals, basics, urborg, utility lands, cavern of souls, tarpits, mutavaults, filters, etc, etc, its very easy to fill up your mana base with lands that aren't darkslick shores.
I suppose a major difference for nahiri is that I play my visions in the side (I'm basically pre-boarded against aggro), meaning theres fewer cards than need the untapped land turn 1.
Nonetheless, I feel this deck revolves around turn 4 too much to make me comfortable with fast lands. turn 4 is when nahiri comes online, when snapcaster really comes into stride, when we cast wrath of gods, etc. I suppose 1 fastland is probably fine, but I would certainly not play more than that, and even 1 I'm hesitant to include.
I'd argue you don't need to (or shouldn't be running) any 4 mana sweepers.
I approve of this card.
I consider Jund to be one of the most mana hungry decks and they are all over these type of lands and Grixis Delver is mana hungry too and has no problem with them. And as has been said, I've been playing Seachrome Coast for months with no issue. You can play at least two of these lands and they will help you much more than they will hurt you.
If you were under the impression that we've only just run into trouble, I would like to remind you of the 3 years that we were tier 3 and best. We still played the deck, and many of us had local success with it. A change in the meta just means we need to tune our deck and do things a little differently. It's not like there's a ridiculous amount of Tron, Amulet, Ad Nauseam at every event. Our deck is better now than it has ever been, so we're not going to drift slowly into the distance and never be seen again.
The best way to beat difficult matchups is to play well. It sounds like a cop out response, but that's really the best option. We have most of the tools required to win, but using them correctly is the difficult part.
UWR Control
Legacy:
W D&T
..my take on the issue of "playing better" and fine-tuning of the deck is to identify as good as possible what the ideal game plan is against the bad match-ups. Only by understanding what the opponent is trying to accomplish with his (deck-)strategy we are able to counteract and eventually take the over the game.
As far as I can deduce we have atm a very strong game plan against creature decks but a somewhat weak spot when it comes to strategies relying on powerful spells (as described by many others in the form of Breach, Ad Nauseam, Tron, etc.). This is where I do not like our countermagic, as a way to disrupt the opponents game plan - our Spell Snares, Remands, Mana Leaks just do not present strong enough ways to interact. I`d rather have Logic Knot, Negates and Cryptics here..
One opponent at GP Lille had Delay in his SB, which was an interesting take - I wouldn't run it, but it is at least a fresh idea...
1) Not playing well (and being unwilling to improve or recognize the problems)
2) Showing up with a poorly tuned 75 (because they have certain pet cards that they refuse to let go of)
3) Running into variance and/or bad match-ups
If you are having trouble, ask yourself which of these things are giving you the most trouble. But do it empirically. WRITE THINGS DOWN. Ask questions to stronger players and BE HONEST AND HUMBLE don't try to "save face" just be honest at what you are unsure about.
Ad Nauseam is very winnable (sideboard dependent) and Tron can be hated if it thrives in your local meta.
..sure, I don't claim its unwinnable - a lot of players acknowledge that.
still, it is where your bulletpoints 1+2 are the most important, which is why we are debating over and over how to improve spell- and skill-wise
I haven't seen anyone debate how to improve "skill-wise". Are people doing that here? Spell-wise you need to identify which decks you are likely to face and which sideboard cards are going to help lead to the most victories.
You might want to check out my list from GP Guangzhou and try to figure out why I picked the cards that I did. That would be a good thought exercise.
Add more V-Cliques, Geists, Spell Quellers, and Aven Mindcensors. IMO some kind of flash build would be best vs. combo decks. Quellers, Cliques, and Geists are the main ones I'd look to experiment with (in larger numbers) if I'm hellbent on beating those decks; they're disruptive and provides a clock.
This literally made me laugh out loud largely because people get so mad bringing up this type of thing here. Geist of Saint Traft is alright, but you really don't want to see too many of them so trying to find the right number can be awkward. Clique is marginally useful as disruption but has a decent clock. The information you get from Clique is usually the most important thing though. Spell Queller is not good in this matchup in my opinion. At best, you snag a Farseek, Sakura-Tribe Elder or Search for Tomorrow. That is not where the party is because those aren't generally the spells that matter. I mean they are, but you'll never counter enough of them for it to matter because they're so dense on the number of ramp spells. Then there's the question of how many Aven Mindcensor would you really want to play? It's not bad at all, but let's not forget that RG Breach decks play more actual threats out of the sideboard in games 2 and 3. Not to mention all those threats make Aven Mindcensor look like a waste of time. Going flash is a nice idea, but I don't think it significantly improves your chances on its own. You really just need to identify your best cards against them and use them appropriately. Some number of Geist of Saint Traft (two for me), Spreading Seas and Cryptic Command (already in the main) have been pretty good for me.