@Imborj: List? Surely 2 Jars, with all the K-Kommands running around. It's the best form of blow-out prevention we got, and a massively synergistic one at that!
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MODERN Blue Lantern, UBx Tezzerator. OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
Write down your decklist here between [.Deck]cards[./deck] brackets, without the points.
Scapeshift: I'm not 100% sure but I think you should let the spell resolve, so they sac all the lands (mwehehehe. Actually, is there a real benefit to that, besides thinning their deck to death? Oh, later Scapeshift possible if their deck is dry out of mountain in the eventuality of them ending up drawing into their artifact removal) and respond to the last Valakut trigger, so all of them triggers targeting you fizzle because of Hexproof. Anyone can confirm?
welp not much to write about today team, i won all 4 of my game 1s but lost all of my game 2s and 3s. in 7 of those 8 matches i faced turn 2 stony / kataki (unfortunately all 5 of my games were versus white). I had thoughtseize in my opener twice, and twice they had 2 stonies in hand.
You allow them to resolve Scapeshift. This way they are put into a position to have the artifact removal(if they do then it doesnt matter when you grab the orb) or lose almost all of their Scapeshift gas. If you orb before they resolve the spell, they just don't sac any lands and try to get the Orb off the table before Scapshifting again.
welp not much to write about today team, i won all 4 of my game 1s but lost all of my game 2s and 3s. in 7 of those 8 matches i faced turn 2 stony / kataki (unfortunately all 5 of my games were versus white). I had thoughtseize in my opener twice, and twice they had 2 stonies in hand.
feelsbadman.
Welp that's unfortunate.
I was reading the Reddit report from the Affinity player who took the huge MKM event that took place this week-end in europe. Well his only losses were to 2x turn 2 Stonies. T2 Stony when you're on the draw is the worst of them all Stonies.
My point being, this happening to you in all of those games is phenomenal badluck. Feelsbadman.
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MODERN Blue Lantern, UBx Tezzerator. OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
Hey everyone. I just wanted to give everyone a quick update on the Sultai Tezz testing. I have been more than impressed with my new approach to the deck. The deck is fast and lean. I have trimmed as much of the "fat" as possible from the deck. Here is the list:
Without going in to much detail, Fatal Push has been the worst card in the deck for me. It can help buy some time for an Ensnaring Bridge but that is it. It can be a speed bump when trying to empty our hand and an awful top deck behind an Ensnaring Bridge.
As time goes on the deck is becoming more and more similar to a lantern control deck. Granted the deck is still very different but the core powerful interactions are still here. Ancient Stirrings, Abrupt Decay, Mox Opal, Ensnaring Bridge, Collective Brutality, Pithing Needle. We are just trading the top-lock cards more more individually power cards and a combo finish.
I'll update more once I get more testing in but so far I really like the direction this is headed and I suggest you try sleeving this up and playing some games.
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U/B Tezzeret Control
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
Without going in to much detail, Fatal Push has been the worst card in the deck for me.
This makes sense as it's highly redundant with Abrupt Decay (Decay being the better Push here), and being on 7x such-an-effect is way over the top.
What's your SB look like?
/e: But my real question would be, what happens when someone drops a Stony Silence on your face? Is the mana-base and the 3-of Decay reliable enough (considering all Opals and Prisms offline) for you not to die before opponent breaks your game? Testing post-board games against drawn-on-purpose Stony Silence would seem useful here.
@Radouf: The mana base works great. I can still cast Abrubt Decay pretty consistently even if my artifacts are shut off. The sideboard is in constant flux as of now but the major cards to combat stony silence are 3x Nature's Claim. Those 6 cards are enough to beat Stony Silence including all of our back up plans. I am looking to bring in a different win condition out of the sideboard that doesn't rely on artifacts. I looked into the various planeswalkers but none of them win fast and I would prefer something that costs a little less. Our options are quite restricted because it is much better if it doesn't win through combat.
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Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
I'm currently stuck on a runway so figured I would take the time to write up some thoughts and see if anyone agrees/disagrees with some of my changes/insights.
I've picked up this deck fairly recently. I tend to play a fair amount of competitive magic but modern was always boring. This deck had an interesting play pattern so I jumped on board.
I've played a handful of tournaments with this deck, doing fairly well. Most recently with this list 4-0 fnm versus fairly difficult matchups (2 gifts storm, 1 regular Jund, 1 dealthshadow jund)
Things I've noticed:
1) Mishras bauble is a must. It has many powerful hidden advantages:
- accelerate whir/herald
- turn on Mox earlier for higher consistency
-dump hand for bridge and draw when you need to
- play early, save cards to draw when discard heavy decks can't access your spells
- scry with fetches (a big reason I play 10 fetches)
2) ghost quarter felt bad. For every game I got my opponent with it, I had 3-4 games where I had to ghost quarter myself to make triple blue. Or opening hands would be unplayable with prism and 2 colorless lands
3) Academy ruins was similarly bad. It hurt the Mana for triple blue and normally when they kill your bridge you immediately die. Rarely do you have time to rebuild.
4) crucible was lackluster as well. Even with a ghost quarter lock I still felt like I needed a soft lock while behind a bridge. I liked having a card you can whir for under stony silence that is grindy, but I've been trying bottled cloister to good success.
5) welding jar is very good versus the death shadow or kcommand/decay decks. One of my favorite cards to have in my opener as it accelerates and gives redundancy after sticking a bridge/thopter sword
6) collected brutality felt awful. It was bad versus all of the dealthshadow variants (the most popular deck). Even decks like storm or affinity where it seems like it would be good, sorcery speed removal that doesn't kill all of their threats isn't what I want. It is very good versus burn, but only true burn, not the naya bushwhacker variants. I had some in the main, shifted them to the board, and have now replaced them with chalice to help versus burn.
7) chalice has been very good. Good versus burn, storm (on 2 they can't win except for 2-4 goblin beat down), infect, tron. Chalice isn't really a good tutor target (except it is great versus living end), but it is an early artifact that progresses our inspire count while being a game winner late.
8) in the dark playing turn 1 pithing needle if necessary I name bloodstained mire. Most played activated ability in modern and in decks I expect to be hurt most by losing a land (burn/deathshadow).
9) versus stony silence decks I bring in 3 decay and 2 demon and trim 2 thopter foundry, 1 sword and 2 or 3 welding jar. I dislike thoughtseize versus these decks as a primary plan (sometimes it's good versus blue white for example) and I like a better answer in top deck mode. Many of these games revolve around getting a bridge in play and grinding with a herald/tezz/cloister and then decaying stony.
10) bottled cloister is somewhat cute, but it has powerful synergy with bridge, including games where I can attack with my herald and on their turn lock down 20+ power in play. It's a whir able target while under bridge lock with no thopter sword that is good versus stony silence and helps you grind. It protects you from future discard, and the matchups I keep it in I dont need to fatal push/whir on their turn.
11) ancient stirings I feel is a trap. While likely one of the best cards in Modern, I feel it doesn't fit what this deck is trying to do. I'm not worried about it messing with the Mana, but even if it was blue it isn't quite what we need. With KCI and scrap trawler it can fetch both halves of the combo, while the only relevant cards it finds in this deck are sword and bridge. Not getting tezz/thopter foundry make it a medium to bad top deck while under a bridge lock.
I think the deck has a ton of play to it and rewards you for understanding the Meta and what common makeups of your opponents decks could look like. As a bonus it is very unfamiliar to many modern players. I've never had people read so many cards before. Tezz also sneaks many more games than he should.
I appreciate the work everyone has done on this thread as it has helped me catch up to speed on the deck very quickly!
Im headed to gp Richmond this weekend and if things don't break my way in the main event I intend to play this in side events.
@Magpie: thanks for the report pal, interesting read! 5-4 (yet spiritual 7-2) is pretty good.
G2 he had t2 Stony Silence, which was really rough, but I stayed calm and just kept playing. I had bridge t3, but he had quad Noble Hierarch and was clocking me for 4 with exalted! I topdeck a tezz to make a 5/5 to keep that rabble at bay, then accumulate 11 artifacts to ult for the win.
This we like to hear.
You guys are making me reconsider the green splash even though last time I did test Ancient Stirrings I was left so underwhelmed by always seeing Tezzerets and Thopter Foundry pass by me. So it's more the versatility of Decays that's drawing me in, when you realize that they're pretty much Fatal Pushes+. Err, just more expensive and not hitting TKS but oh well, digs you out of you Stony Silence grave.
@Racing089: Is it really worth the splash for Ancient Stirrings over just running Glint-Nest Crane for a similar effect but this one not missing Foundry & having a body to do and block things with? [All this is making me think that we're pretty close to be able to mainboard Chalice of the Void again ]
@Molz7: Hey welcome aboard! You raise good points. Regarding Ghost Quarter: am I mistaken thinking that Chalice won't give you as many Tron games than GQ will? (In context: keep in mind that I'm running Surgical Extraction for the blowout). GQ are a key element in making Tron somewhat manageable. Tron and the über-grindy plan of soft Crucible lock really are the reasons why I'm on so many GQs myself, and anyways mana has been manageable in my experience.
Your experience with Collective Brutality also seems to differ greatly from mine. I find myself often leaning on it either to survive aggro waves and burn or to punch a hole through countermagic or combo; this versatility makes it so that I would just so not cut it. All in all, maybe these choices are just a matter of local metagame.
Lastly you are selling Bottled Cloister very well. It's true that it's stupidly synergistic with the beatdown / Herald plan, kind of allowing us to short-circuit the bridgelock that's otherwise an utter nonbo with them beaters.
Hey please keep it up and keep us informed of your testing!
@Radouf: Ancient Stirrings is better than it may seem on the surface. It makes finding Ensnaring Bridge and Sword of the Meek very reliable. This puts less stress on Whir of Invention to find everything. Also, since Ancient Stirrings can find lands with almost 90% success we can easily trim 1 land for every 2 Ancient Stirrings. It is much better top deck than additional lands. I don't find it particularly comparable to Glint-Nest Crane. It digs 1 deeper and finds way more cards than Crane for 1 less mana. When we are finding Ensnaring Bridge much faster Glint-Nest Crane's body is much less valuable. The only notable exception is Thopter Foundry but that is hardly an issue.
I don't like game 1 Chalice of the Void without a way to turbo it out on turn 1 consistently.
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Ok been goldfishing this @Racing inspired BUG list for a while and gotta say I'm stoked by it's consistency (thx Stirrings). Also up to four Opals for maximum turbo-ness. Things are getting pretty dang turbo!
Intuitively, i expect such a change in setup will give us slightly better scores against medium match-ups (which is good), and resiliency to Stony Silence hallelujah. However I hate that this is squeezing out my anti-Tron plan. SB in uploaded list is a mess, as you can see.
Is the expedition map still worth running in this list if you don't have ghost quarter or academy ruins? it might be better off as a third welding jar, a darksteel citadel or maybe another inventors fair or even another U/G shock or fetch.
19 lands seems rather ambitious if you are leaning heavily on casting 3 and 4 cmc spells as win-cons but with opals and prisms its hard for me to tell straight off the bat.
Super interesting, thanks for the link @Reedy26. Dominic Harvey ran no MD discard effects (not even Brutality)! Not sure I'd want to play in my meta without MD brutality... Also, he's deep into the combo on 4 foundry, 3 sword; I wonder what his thinking is on those numbers. I guess if you're not MDing Brutality, then the foundry is more useful. Tolaria West looks a lot better if you're MDing EngEx and Chalice.
Can someone explain the utility of the snow-covered basics (... just idiosyncratic)?
Snow basics were because I had to finish my list and those were closest to hand! You can also bluff having Gifts Ungiven in your deck if you have both regular and snow, but that's incredibly niche.
4 Foundry/3 Sword because that combo is what makes the deck work and it's your primary plan in a lot of matchups. In particular, against Death's Shadow of all stripes I just want to have consistent access to the combo to fight through discard.
Brutality has been very hit-or-miss for me. It's the best card against Burn, solid against Collected Company decks, a bad Duress against combo/control, and weak against everything else. It exemplifies issues the deck already had (having a lot of situational cards and being clunky when it's bad). It can be useful for emptying your hand for Bridge but that's often the best you can say about it.
I tweaked the list a bit for the tournament Magpie wrote about:
I went 5-3-1 but was on zero sleep and playing terribly; I draw a very bizarre/complicated match against Abzan that was a win with decent play. Notably, I'm now 4-1 against Jund Shadow over the two events and I think the matchup is solid.
Notes:
- I soured on Bauble and I'm not sure where I stand on it moving ahead. As above, this deck's draws are often polarized (cards are either very good/bad based on the matchup) so the value of a random card is hard to gauge. I found you often need it to make Opal active but this forces you to keep Bauble in play past the point when you want to cash it in. The synergy with Tezz is cute and I love having extra 0-mana artifacts for Whir/Bridge, but idk.
- On that note, I'm not happy with Opal either. Opal makes your best draws better but often does little to nothing in your average or bad draws. Against decks with discard or artifact hate it's easy for them to make you 'mulligan' by stranding an Opal; I realized this weekend I should board them out against Shadow and similar decks. In particular, it was hard to make Opal help me jump ahead to T3 Tezz as often as I would like. It's obviously an amazing card and belongs in some capacity but I could see any of 1-4 being 'correct' depending on your configuration; I'm not sure if I want to double down on the turbo aspect of the deck or dial it back completely. Talisman was good and more reliable T3 Tezz/Damnation is very appealing.
- The green splash for Abrupt Decay would require overhauling the manabase but may well be worth it; Stony Silence is one of the few ways you can lose to the decks that play it and it's one of the best cards you can have against the GBx Shadow decks (Go for the Throat is nice but Liliana is often the big problem). Culling Scales was the only thing I could find that you can Whir for to beat Stony Silence but it's so bad :(.
- Whir is so, so good.
- Spreading Seas buys time against Tron but also does great work against Shadow and Burn while being fine against random other decks.
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OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
EDIT: @radouf i can pm you my list. i havent looked into the formatting for decklists here.
Scapeshift: I'm not 100% sure but I think you should let the spell resolve, so they sac all the lands (mwehehehe. Actually, is there a real benefit to that, besides thinning their deck to death? Oh, later Scapeshift possible if their deck is dry out of mountain in the eventuality of them ending up drawing into their artifact removal) and respond to the last Valakut trigger, so all of them triggers targeting you fizzle because of Hexproof. Anyone can confirm?
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
feelsbadman.
I was reading the Reddit report from the Affinity player who took the huge MKM event that took place this week-end in europe. Well his only losses were to 2x turn 2 Stonies. T2 Stony when you're on the draw is the worst of them all Stonies.
My point being, this happening to you in all of those games is phenomenal badluck. Feelsbadman.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
2 Botanical Sanctum
1 Breeding Pool
2 Darkslick Shores
2 Island
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Polluted Delta
4 Spire of Industry
1 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
3 Abrupt Decay
4 Ancient Stirrings
2 Collective Brutality
4 Fatal Push
3 Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas
4 Whir of Invention
Artifacts:
2 Ensnaring Bridge
4 Mishra's Bauble
3 Mox Opal
4 Pentad Prism
1 Pithing Needle
2 Sword of the Meek
2 Thopter Foundry
1 Trading Post
2 Welding Jar
Without going in to much detail, Fatal Push has been the worst card in the deck for me. It can help buy some time for an Ensnaring Bridge but that is it. It can be a speed bump when trying to empty our hand and an awful top deck behind an Ensnaring Bridge.
As time goes on the deck is becoming more and more similar to a lantern control deck. Granted the deck is still very different but the core powerful interactions are still here. Ancient Stirrings, Abrupt Decay, Mox Opal, Ensnaring Bridge, Collective Brutality, Pithing Needle. We are just trading the top-lock cards more more individually power cards and a combo finish.
I'll update more once I get more testing in but so far I really like the direction this is headed and I suggest you try sleeving this up and playing some games.
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
This makes sense as it's highly redundant with Abrupt Decay (Decay being the better Push here), and being on 7x such-an-effect is way over the top.
What's your SB look like?
/e: But my real question would be, what happens when someone drops a Stony Silence on your face? Is the mana-base and the 3-of Decay reliable enough (considering all Opals and Prisms offline) for you not to die before opponent breaks your game? Testing post-board games against drawn-on-purpose Stony Silence would seem useful here.
//e: Hum, Ancient Stirrings.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
4 flooded strand
2 misty rainforest
3 island
1 swamp
2 watery grave
1 breeding pool
1 inventors faire
4 darkslick shores
3 Mox Opal
3 welding jar
4 Mishra's bauble
2 relic of progenitus
1 pitching needle
1 engineered explosives
4 Pentad prism
3 thopter foundry
2 sword of the meek
2 ensnaring bridge
1 bottled cloister
4 tezzeret agent of bolas
4 whir of invention
3 fatal push
1 damnation
3 chalice of the void
1 pithing needle
1 damnation
2 herald or anguish
3 abrupt decay
2 thought seize
1 quicksilver fountain
1 Witch bane orb
1 grafdigger's cage
I've picked up this deck fairly recently. I tend to play a fair amount of competitive magic but modern was always boring. This deck had an interesting play pattern so I jumped on board.
I've played a handful of tournaments with this deck, doing fairly well. Most recently with this list 4-0 fnm versus fairly difficult matchups (2 gifts storm, 1 regular Jund, 1 dealthshadow jund)
Things I've noticed:
1) Mishras bauble is a must. It has many powerful hidden advantages:
- accelerate whir/herald
- turn on Mox earlier for higher consistency
-dump hand for bridge and draw when you need to
- play early, save cards to draw when discard heavy decks can't access your spells
- scry with fetches (a big reason I play 10 fetches)
2) ghost quarter felt bad. For every game I got my opponent with it, I had 3-4 games where I had to ghost quarter myself to make triple blue. Or opening hands would be unplayable with prism and 2 colorless lands
3) Academy ruins was similarly bad. It hurt the Mana for triple blue and normally when they kill your bridge you immediately die. Rarely do you have time to rebuild.
4) crucible was lackluster as well. Even with a ghost quarter lock I still felt like I needed a soft lock while behind a bridge. I liked having a card you can whir for under stony silence that is grindy, but I've been trying bottled cloister to good success.
5) welding jar is very good versus the death shadow or kcommand/decay decks. One of my favorite cards to have in my opener as it accelerates and gives redundancy after sticking a bridge/thopter sword
6) collected brutality felt awful. It was bad versus all of the dealthshadow variants (the most popular deck). Even decks like storm or affinity where it seems like it would be good, sorcery speed removal that doesn't kill all of their threats isn't what I want. It is very good versus burn, but only true burn, not the naya bushwhacker variants. I had some in the main, shifted them to the board, and have now replaced them with chalice to help versus burn.
7) chalice has been very good. Good versus burn, storm (on 2 they can't win except for 2-4 goblin beat down), infect, tron. Chalice isn't really a good tutor target (except it is great versus living end), but it is an early artifact that progresses our inspire count while being a game winner late.
8) in the dark playing turn 1 pithing needle if necessary I name bloodstained mire. Most played activated ability in modern and in decks I expect to be hurt most by losing a land (burn/deathshadow).
9) versus stony silence decks I bring in 3 decay and 2 demon and trim 2 thopter foundry, 1 sword and 2 or 3 welding jar. I dislike thoughtseize versus these decks as a primary plan (sometimes it's good versus blue white for example) and I like a better answer in top deck mode. Many of these games revolve around getting a bridge in play and grinding with a herald/tezz/cloister and then decaying stony.
10) bottled cloister is somewhat cute, but it has powerful synergy with bridge, including games where I can attack with my herald and on their turn lock down 20+ power in play. It's a whir able target while under bridge lock with no thopter sword that is good versus stony silence and helps you grind. It protects you from future discard, and the matchups I keep it in I dont need to fatal push/whir on their turn.
11) ancient stirings I feel is a trap. While likely one of the best cards in Modern, I feel it doesn't fit what this deck is trying to do. I'm not worried about it messing with the Mana, but even if it was blue it isn't quite what we need. With KCI and scrap trawler it can fetch both halves of the combo, while the only relevant cards it finds in this deck are sword and bridge. Not getting tezz/thopter foundry make it a medium to bad top deck while under a bridge lock.
I think the deck has a ton of play to it and rewards you for understanding the Meta and what common makeups of your opponents decks could look like. As a bonus it is very unfamiliar to many modern players. I've never had people read so many cards before. Tezz also sneaks many more games than he should.
I appreciate the work everyone has done on this thread as it has helped me catch up to speed on the deck very quickly!
Im headed to gp Richmond this weekend and if things don't break my way in the main event I intend to play this in side events.
You guys are making me reconsider the green splash even though last time I did test Ancient Stirrings I was left so underwhelmed by always seeing Tezzerets and Thopter Foundry pass by me. So it's more the versatility of Decays that's drawing me in, when you realize that they're pretty much Fatal Pushes+. Err, just more expensive and not hitting TKS but oh well, digs you out of you Stony Silence grave.
@Racing089: Is it really worth the splash for Ancient Stirrings over just running Glint-Nest Crane for a similar effect but this one not missing Foundry & having a body to do and block things with? [All this is making me think that we're pretty close to be able to mainboard Chalice of the Void again ]
@Molz7: Hey welcome aboard! You raise good points. Regarding Ghost Quarter: am I mistaken thinking that Chalice won't give you as many Tron games than GQ will? (In context: keep in mind that I'm running Surgical Extraction for the blowout). GQ are a key element in making Tron somewhat manageable. Tron and the über-grindy plan of soft Crucible lock really are the reasons why I'm on so many GQs myself, and anyways mana has been manageable in my experience.
Your experience with Collective Brutality also seems to differ greatly from mine. I find myself often leaning on it either to survive aggro waves and burn or to punch a hole through countermagic or combo; this versatility makes it so that I would just so not cut it. All in all, maybe these choices are just a matter of local metagame.
Lastly you are selling Bottled Cloister very well. It's true that it's stupidly synergistic with the beatdown / Herald plan, kind of allowing us to short-circuit the bridgelock that's otherwise an utter nonbo with them beaters.
Hey please keep it up and keep us informed of your testing!
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
I don't like game 1 Chalice of the Void without a way to turbo it out on turn 1 consistently.
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
http://docker2.deckedbuilder.com:3001/d/295596
Intuitively, i expect such a change in setup will give us slightly better scores against medium match-ups (which is good), and resiliency to Stony Silence hallelujah. However I hate that this is squeezing out my anti-Tron plan. SB in uploaded list is a mess, as you can see.
OLD SCHOOL 93/94 «The Pain Train» Black Sligh, Esper «Machine Gun» Artifacts, Jund «Psycho» Ponza-Disko.
My current strategy.
However most Tron decks are on Eldrazi Tron which is much easier than traditional Tron.
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
Is the expedition map still worth running in this list if you don't have ghost quarter or academy ruins? it might be better off as a third welding jar, a darksteel citadel or maybe another inventors fair or even another U/G shock or fetch.
19 lands seems rather ambitious if you are leaning heavily on casting 3 and 4 cmc spells as win-cons but with opals and prisms its hard for me to tell straight off the bat.
Snow basics were because I had to finish my list and those were closest to hand! You can also bluff having Gifts Ungiven in your deck if you have both regular and snow, but that's incredibly niche.
4 Foundry/3 Sword because that combo is what makes the deck work and it's your primary plan in a lot of matchups. In particular, against Death's Shadow of all stripes I just want to have consistent access to the combo to fight through discard.
Brutality has been very hit-or-miss for me. It's the best card against Burn, solid against Collected Company decks, a bad Duress against combo/control, and weak against everything else. It exemplifies issues the deck already had (having a lot of situational cards and being clunky when it's bad). It can be useful for emptying your hand for Bridge but that's often the best you can say about it.
I tweaked the list a bit for the tournament Magpie wrote about:
1 Chalice of the Void
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Executioner’s Capsule
4 Fatal Push
1 Go for the Throat
1 Collective Brutality
2 Mox Opal
1 Talisman of Dominance
4 Pentad Prism
1 Pithing Needle
1 Nihil Spellbomb
3 Sword of the Meek
4 Thopter Foundry
2 Welding Jar
4 Whir of Invention
1 Bloodstained Mire
4 Darkslick Shores
2 River of Tears
1 Flooded Strand
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Inventors’ Fair
4 Polluted Delta
1 Snow-Covered Island
2 Island
1 Swamp
1 Tolaria West
2 Watery Grave
2 Collective Brutality
2 Damnation
1 Grafdigger’s Cage
1 Liliana of the Veil
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Culling Scales
4 Thoughtseize
1 Go for the Throat
2 Spreading Seas
I went 5-3-1 but was on zero sleep and playing terribly; I draw a very bizarre/complicated match against Abzan that was a win with decent play. Notably, I'm now 4-1 against Jund Shadow over the two events and I think the matchup is solid.
Notes:
- I soured on Bauble and I'm not sure where I stand on it moving ahead. As above, this deck's draws are often polarized (cards are either very good/bad based on the matchup) so the value of a random card is hard to gauge. I found you often need it to make Opal active but this forces you to keep Bauble in play past the point when you want to cash it in. The synergy with Tezz is cute and I love having extra 0-mana artifacts for Whir/Bridge, but idk.
- On that note, I'm not happy with Opal either. Opal makes your best draws better but often does little to nothing in your average or bad draws. Against decks with discard or artifact hate it's easy for them to make you 'mulligan' by stranding an Opal; I realized this weekend I should board them out against Shadow and similar decks. In particular, it was hard to make Opal help me jump ahead to T3 Tezz as often as I would like. It's obviously an amazing card and belongs in some capacity but I could see any of 1-4 being 'correct' depending on your configuration; I'm not sure if I want to double down on the turbo aspect of the deck or dial it back completely. Talisman was good and more reliable T3 Tezz/Damnation is very appealing.
- The green splash for Abrupt Decay would require overhauling the manabase but may well be worth it; Stony Silence is one of the few ways you can lose to the decks that play it and it's one of the best cards you can have against the GBx Shadow decks (Go for the Throat is nice but Liliana is often the big problem). Culling Scales was the only thing I could find that you can Whir for to beat Stony Silence but it's so bad :(.
- Whir is so, so good.
- Spreading Seas buys time against Tron but also does great work against Shadow and Burn while being fine against random other decks.