@Jace: Yep, that's exactly how Culling Scales plays out vs. Spirits for me. They get locked behind Bridge, and then it takes like 5-6 turns of stall before the scales cuts through their 1-drops and any 1s or 0s I have in play, and then it cuts through the hate cards and unlocks my finisher.
I like your Krosan Grip idea.
@Dustycrumbz: Awesome report, thanks for writing it! Your list mentions Search for Azcanta a few times, but I don't see it in your list. But the main list is 59 cards, so I assume it's accurate if you just add Search?
Match 1 & 7: Assume your prison was just Damping Sphere to stop storm, and then Bridge to stop small warrens bits? What's your SB vs. Storm? Is Echoing Truth or any of their other bounce a problem for you?
Match 2 & 6: What's your SB plan vs. Jund?
Match 8: Isn't the best line with Thopter-Sword vs. Surgical, Spellbomb, etc. to leave one mana open and a backup artifact to sac, and make lands -1 thopters every turn?
One thing I realized is that Mausoleum Wanderer or Moorland Haunt Spirit and a Drogskol Captain means you can never kill their 2 drop enchantments. It's not nearly as common as many of the other interactions but still interesting.
One thing I realized is that Mausoleum Wanderer or Moorland Haunt Spirit and a Drogskol Captain means you can never kill their 2 drop enchantments. It's not nearly as common as many of the other interactions but still interesting.
This is also true for any CMC 2 or less that is a Spirit, it doesn't need to be a token from Moorland Haunt nor a Mauseloum Wanderer, it will also work with Rattlechains, Selfless Spirit and so on.
Edit: NVM, I thought you were trying to kill the Drogskol Captain
Grip seems like a sweet idea until you're up against humans, and you just wish that grip were a decay. I think trophy is better most of the time as an overall SB card. As a card to hit leyline, I've found golgari charm to be quite nice recently, and almost never dead in the matchups I bring it in.
Yeah,I'm just not sold on scales being a legitimate answer to stony and RIP. First, you're pretty much assuming you're successfully hiding behind a bridge. In that case, if I wanted a whirrable target that hits the enchantments, I'd rather just play Spine of Ish Sah since I have the time to rack up lands and artifact behind bridge.
Edit: I've been splitting time between piloting this deck in competitive mtgo leagues, and brewing dumb decks for fun (with absolutely no success). But every time I play this deck in the current meta, I'm going 4-1 at worst. I just can't believe how well positioned it feels. Last league, I barely beat a bunch of fair GBx decks, so I put a tezz in the board for the first time in forever, which I know will make some people happy to hear. I've mostly been losing to infect and humans, so I dropped the surgicals for pushes as I already play 4 main deck spellbombs and a cage.
Where are you guys on Nature’s Claim vs Abrupt Decay? It doesn’t seem like the lifegain matters much since we’re not exactly trying to eek out damage to win matches.
The way I see it, you’re trading the ‘cannot be countered’ clause and the ability to kill creatures/liliana for the ability to kill 3+ cmc artifacts and enchantments.
A couple questions:
1. Am I framing this correctly?
2. Which do you prefer?
3. Where does Assasin’s Trophy fit in? I personally am not a fan of the drawback and would never want to play a trophy on tuns 2-4.
1.) Yes
2.) I prefer Abrupt Decay for a few reasons. Most of the Stony Silence decks are also the Blue decks with counters. Whether it be Mausoleum Wanderer or Cryptic Command I need to know that the 1-3 cards I am drawing to WILL work when I find them. In addition to that I often board them in as extra removal spells against specific decks like Humans.
3.) As of late I have been playing a ton of ATrophy in Sultai Midrange/Control style decks and have loved it there but am likely not to touch it here. Mostly because the utility is different. I don't NEED an all purpose answer, I need to kill Stony Silence, Rest in Peace and Thalia Guardian of Thraben. Why play Atrophy if it is actively worst in most scenarios that I need it? In midrange/control decks I play the card as a better Terminate paired with Fatal Push to negate most of the early ramping problem.
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U/B Tezzeret Control
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
1.) Yes
2.) I prefer Abrupt Decay for a few reasons. Most of the Stony Silence decks are also the Blue decks with counters. Whether it be Mausoleum Wanderer or Cryptic Command I need to know that the 1-3 cards I am drawing to WILL work when I find them. In addition to that I often board them in as extra removal spells against specific decks like Humans.
3.) As of late I have been playing a ton of ATrophy in Sultai Midrange/Control style decks and have loved it there but am likely not to touch it here. Mostly because the utility is different. I don't NEED an all purpose answer, I need to kill Stony Silence, Rest in Peace and Thalia Guardian of Thraben. Why play Atrophy if it is actively worst in most scenarios that I need it? In midrange/control decks I play the card as a better Terminate paired with Fatal Push to negate most of the early ramping problem.
I think it’s closer than it appears... Spirits run spell queller which ignores the uncounterable clause, and UW is typically holding up cryptic once you’re at the point where you have the combo and a trophy (cryptic bounce in response). Meanwhile, trophy hits leyline/worship etc at 4cmc which is pretty significant these days. I’m on trophy and again I think it’s really close. I don’t find the land drawback to be extremely Relevant in the matchups we need trophy since we’re definitely not turn 2/3ing trophy.
You can search for a 1 CMC artifact in that scenario. This often comes up with Battle at the Bridge against Humans. I'm usually tapping a land, and two 0 CMC artifacts to kill Thalia.
I've been running 2 Trophy main, plus 2 Decay in the board lately and liking the feel of that. Trophy is a nice catchall. I'd almost just want to run 4 trophy in the 75 if UW weren't so popular. I like the flexibility of the trophy, either hitting a problem land, a planeswalker, a creature, a stony silence. I like that it hits stony, RIP, and Leyline, unlike Decay. Especially if we've got the bridge or the thopter sword combo online, I'm generally fine with giving them a land.
I've always liked Battle at the Bridge over fatal push as well. Sure instant speed is nice, but I like battle often being able to kill really anything. Maybe they've got a Platinum Emperion, or a Baneslayer Angel, so something indestructible, whatever. Plus the life gain is great. I've even just battle'd my own token to gain like 14 life before. I love Battle, but the maindeck trophy has kicked battle out of the main Battle certainly has some advantages, easier to kill thalia etc, but again the flexibility of Trophy is just so appealing
I really like the look of your list. The only thing I want to sell you on is Nihil Spllbomb. I think it's miles better than Relic, and not just because you can sac it for a thopter while drawing a card, like you mentioned, although that's a nice interaction to have -- and I would argue that it's better than chromatic star because of its flexibility. It doesn't require mana to exile a graveyard, which is huge in the matchups where you want that effect. Being able to whir for 1 in case of emergency, like against dredge or storm, can be the difference between winning and losing. And you can play it turn 1, and know that you don't have to hold open mana against dredge in case their first or second dredge puts all the good stuff in their yard.
I'd say just go for KCI - it's so much faster to assemble. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, it generates mana, so you can play it and then other cards in your hand, such as a top-decked sword.
@Jace: Yep, that's exactly how Culling Scales plays out vs. Spirits for me. They get locked behind Bridge, and then it takes like 5-6 turns of stall before the scales cuts through their 1-drops and any 1s or 0s I have in play, and then it cuts through the hate cards and unlocks my finisher.
I like your Krosan Grip idea.
@Dustycrumbz: Awesome report, thanks for writing it! Your list mentions Search for Azcanta a few times, but I don't see it in your list. But the main list is 59 cards, so I assume it's accurate if you just add Search?
Match 1 & 7: Assume your prison was just Damping Sphere to stop storm, and then Bridge to stop small warrens bits? What's your SB vs. Storm? Is Echoing Truth or any of their other bounce a problem for you?
Match 2 & 6: What's your SB plan vs. Jund?
Match 8: Isn't the best line with Thopter-Sword vs. Surgical, Spellbomb, etc. to leave one mana open and a backup artifact to sac, and make lands -1 thopters every turn?
So I generally dislike sideboard guides because you shouldn't blindly follow them as-is 100% of the time. That being said, I don't mind sharing what cards I look at bringing out/in as a general guideline to point you in the right direction:
Storm:
We want to be less about the combo and more about prison locking, though sometimes I'll keep some of the combo in if I'm on the play.
In:
1x Spellskite
1x Witchbane Orb
2x Thoughtseize
2x Abrupt Decay
3x Ego
2x Tezzeret
1x Padeem/Damnation (take note of how many warrens they had if you ego game 2 and go to game 3, adjust accordingly).
Jund
Here we want to mitigate the effects of their interaction by making sure our deck has less "air" and more density of impactful topdecks. All GBx decks should be approached similarly, but you'll need to tweak depending on if they have a 3rd color and whether it's white/red. I'm addressing Jund here specifically:
Out
3x Mox
1x Cage
1x Damp Sphere
1x Time Sieve
3x Brutality (they have more hand disruption than you, and since they're highly incentivized to keep it all in, you never want to try to fight them on that level)
In
1x Pithing Needle
1x Spellskite
2x Abrupt Decay
1x Damnation
2x Tezzeret
1x Padeem
1x Something like Witchbane or keep in cage as a cheap way to advance the board for whir/stop BBE
In regards to my round 8, you're absolutely right - that's how to play around surgical. However, my board state at the time had no excess artifacts. I took the conservative line by deploying artifacts in my hand to then protect the sword from surgical in the following turns, but his draws lined up in a way that punished my respect for surgical. Not sure if it was correct, all I know is that I got scared out of being aggressive from my previous punt against storm in G1 of R7.
@the_nobodys: kudos to your consistent league results! I noticed you had an LOTV in your sideboard, which is something I've actually been trying myself since regionals.
I've been continuing to test some things ahead of my next tournament, mainly seeing if I can afford to ignore answers to things that decay can't hit by increasing the number of things that don't care about GY hate or even stony (much like grixis whir postboard). I don't know if I like the artifact density of my list's post board configuration enough to play Sai/Herald over other things for now.
Ego was good but not as great as I had hoped it'd be (again, I want to revisit this again in the near future). Instead, I've been testing a postboard with 1x LOTV (which I saw was in the_nobody's recent 5-0 list), 2x Ashiok, and 2x Tez. Most of the decks that play the things I want trophy/pulse for are strategies where I want to prioritize the bridge plan. I liked the idea of playing more walkers that cost less than 4 for curve considerations, which also allows easier double spell turns against control. Not having ego makes me a bit worse against combos like KCI, but LOTV can be a huge problem for anything trying to sculpt a hand and also has better cross applications to other matchups than ego. Ashiok was always a midrange/control killer in mirrors back in the day, and the cmc makes me feel better about bringing it in instead of more 4-drops like additional Tez/JTMS. It felt good the last few times I cast it (GBx and humans), we'll see if it continues to perform.
I've been testing a few things people have been discussing and have a few conclusions:
1) After playing with all three of them, the order of 1 CMC cantrips for this archetype is: Faithless Looting > Serum Visions > Ancient Stirrings. Faithless Looting is the best because you can discard a sword to enable Thopter-Foundry as early as T2 (with active Opal) or infinite on T3 (with KCI).
2) KCI is much, much more versatile than Time Sieve. I've played with both, and even with a deck with 4 Chromatic Star and 4 Terrarion Time Sieve just wasn't that great. By contrast, with Faithless Looting you can go infinite on T3 with Ironworks. It's so good I've started to consider additional copies to increase the odds of going infinite early. In close to 30 matches I've never wanted a Time Sieve.
3) After playing with them, I think the order of the 1 CMC artifacts is Pithing Needle > Pyrite Spellbomb > Nihil Spellbomb > Chromatic Star. My current opinion is that maybe your 1st Pyrite is good enough to play, and maybe your first Nihil is good enough to play, but generally Bridge just makes you not care about creatures, and Witchbane Orb and Damping Sphere make you mostly not care about spells from graveyards G1. On the other hand, you desperately want every Pithing Needle you can get your hands on vs. KCI, Tron, and Hardened Scales, which are all top tier decks. It's basically mainboarding a SB card that has high utility in specific places, and is a lovely mana rock otherwise.
I also have the latest version of my deck, which has gone Jeskai for Nihiri out of the SB as an answer to hateful enchantments, and as an additional threat vs. control. I incorporate Faithless Looting and KCI which gets a fair amount of going infinite on T3 and T4, which is a great angle of attack for a deck that started as just a prison!
@TolariaWest I have to respectfully disagree on a few things here. While looting is arguably a better card in a vacuum than serum visions, I value serum over looting for two reasons:
1) Many of our lists are heavily base blue with fetchlands and often we fetch for basic island. Without doing a major overhaul on the mana base and artifact spread to comfortably incorporate the 8x gold lands, Looting has a pseudo phyrexian mana tied to its cost a decent enough amount of time in this archetype that I couldn't justify it, especially since a lot of our matchups are razor thin already and every life point counts ahead of getting to a lock. I see you're not playing fetches but without changing the manabase most of us have found we like, even if you argue that fetch/shock serum deals the same damage as fetch/shock looting, the major difference is that unless you're straight UR, you shocked and still need another color with the looting line.
The list I've personally found I like has black as the secondary color and a light green splash for the board, but in reality, one of its greatest strengths is that it's happy playing primarily as a nearly mono blue deck and treats black as a splash (you only usually need the first black source). Again your take is going in a slightly different direction (not saying it's necessarily wrong by any means), but many of us have stuck with/gone back to serum over looting because we can't justify the adjustments it takes to make looting less painful.
2) Our lines are tight on mana, and sometimes we would rather the scry to see 3 cards deep and protect cards 2-3 from hand disruption rather than immediately draw them. Looting is better late and sees more cards overall with flashback, but serum is a spell I'm much more comfortable seeing with a 1-land hand for this reason and the point above.
I do think some of the things your list has incorporated are pretty neat though. Nahiri is certainly an interesting card out of the board. Keep up the testing, I'm interested to see how your list continues to develop!
@DustyCrumbz: You make a lot of excellent points! Some thoughts:
1) I'm actually horrified that most people are playing fetch/shock manabases. In close to a quarter of my games I find I get as low as 1-2 life and turn things around from there. Sometimes I pay 1-2 life off a Spire, but usually I execute every spell painlessly. I worry that people are actually losing a considerable number of games to pain from their lands. Obviously, the alternative is that I am much more vulnerable to Blood Moon, but I think there are far more burn decks than blood moon decks, so I think this is the right way to skew vulnerability.
All that said, two colors have the advantage of less pain and less vulnerability to Blood Moon. I think there are good arguments for avoiding Looting and choosing Serum visions instead just to save life and manabase complexity. (Also, visions gets better when discard based decks are doing well, which is not right now, but could be true again in the future.) Especially if you're playing fewer than the full 4 Foundries plus Swords Serum Visions also gets better
since your chance of getting virtual mana in addition to card selection from Faithless Looting goes away. It's not just the card selection I'm into, but the fact that Looting can save as many as 2 mana by letting you play a 0 CMC card instead of paying the 2 CMC to cast sword.
2) Agreed, Serum Visions does help more with 1 land hands. I do occasionally have trouble casting Looting on T1 because I'm stretching. Reliability of U on turn 1 is a big deal.
3) Nahiri is possibly the real deal. I've won every game I've cast her, she has disenchanted multiple enchantments more than once. I also didn't appreciate how strong her looting ability is. Need more data, this is just drawing from 5 matches at this point.
@Al_Z_Heimer: I could see making a 1/1 split between Academy Ruins and Inventors' Fair. They are both Legendary, so I don't love drawing two of either of them. I like the way Ruins makes you able to infinitely not deck yourself, so you can win if you can just lock their win cons out. Ruins also performs really well against control since you can just re-run your threats over and over and over.
I noticed your deck has a lighter land count and fewer Opals, what's up with that?
I've tested Jeskai out quite a bit. It's got its advantages, like the looting dropping sword into foundry, reanimate from a 0 cmc artifact. (Don't forget that Steelshaper's Gift can improve combo consistency). Also, Nahiri is nice out of the board to deal with problem enchanments and big goyfs... but as an answer to stony, is she really? We see stony and RIP primarily from UW control and Spirits, both tier 1 decks, and those decks can both counter Nahiri easily with counterspells or Spell Queller. Compared to decay, which can't be countered and can be played around queller, I've found Nahiri to be less consistent as an answer. If you do play Nahiri, I like that you're playing 4 with Emrakul. Although, how does that work with the four bridges? Seems like quite a bit of tension between those two gameplans.
There's also a drawback to playing 8 fastlands. That's a lot of lands coming into play tapped throughout the game, which can hurt in just as important ways as the life lost from fetchlands.
In the faithless looting/serum visions comparison, looting is great with a sword in hand, but when you don't, it forces you to make discard decisions that are not always easy. Can you consistently fire it off turn 1 on the play when you don't know what your opponent is on? We really only want swords in the yard, we don't play souls or bloodghast. Also, looting is a lot more dangerous vs surgical extraction, which is a common sideboard card these days, playable in literally every deck, and against leyline and RIP, looting loses a lot of its advantages.
@TheNobodys: Against UW control I board out Ensnaring Bridge as I expect them to go hard control G2 and G3, and their only threats will be Snapcaster Mage and Celestial Collonade. Most of them board out Snapcaster because they bring in RIP, so I just expect Pithing Needle to address their creature base. So far this is the only match where I'm very likely to play Emrakul. (Though I have found out that KCI + Emrakul is a combo... ;p ) Vs. aggro decks with access to white enchantment hate (Eldrazi, Spirits, Boggles, etc.) I expect Ensnaring Bridge to more or less stabilize the game on its own. Nahiri is just a way of freeing up our win condition in the face of disruption, and we generally don't need Emrakul there. I feel like there's plenty of time in these matches, and Nahiri has worked as intended almost every time. The biggest problem I've had is actually vs. Thalia out of Eldrazi since if you don't also have a Torpor Orb in place they can Flickerwisp through your bridge(s). This is all to say that Nahiri could easily be a different card that served as a win con vs. this suite of decks?
I'm curious with your extensive Jeskai experience what you'd suggest I do with my SB? I'm *sure* I want the three Spellskites and the Grafdigger's Cage. I'm increasingly convinced I want a Torpor Orb even with the non-bo it presents with Thopter-Sword. But it's good enough that I think eating it if I'm ready to go off is worth the protection it brings. 2 Aether Grid has been just okay. It usually gets disenchanted or countered, so I guess it's doing it's job? But a lot of the time it represents pinging for just 1 or 2 a turn, which is decent but slow. Tezzeret the Seeker has been pretty good vs. BG/x decks, and I think two is the right amount. But, like, it seems like there must be better stuff than what I've found so far?
You make a great point about fastlands. I've thought it would be okay because most of my spells are CMC 3 or less, but I'll start paying attention more to see if I'm losing games because of that feature.
It is true there are cases where looting has some disadvantages, but I feel they pale in comparison to the times where it is a huge advantage. In 20 matches, I think I've only lost one game from discarding the wrong card to Looting. I've never had a sword extracted because of Looting, you just play carefully where appropriate. It is true that any deck can run extraction, but different decks run different hate for specific reasons, and Extraction mainly appears in decks that value spells (as opposed to creatures, enchantments, or artifacts).
The_nobodys raises a good point regarding the blue reactive matchups. My testing concluded that while cards like Nahiri/JTMS/Tez Seeker are certainly viable options, if I'm paying 4+ mana for a threat postboard, I want Tezzeret AOB before any of these. Trying to resolve expensive threats like these usually result in a negative tempo play that can allow the opponent an opportunity to turn the corner which I'm not a huge fan of.
As I mentioned previously, I've been trying to explore 2-3 mana high impact, alt Wincons that are serviceable in these matchups but also allow us to double spell on the turns we would otherwise be exposing ourselves to a single big spell. Grid fits the bill, but only if you've adjusted the artifact count to accommodate this gameplan (much like Sai/Herald demand). My list personally trims on the artifact count post board in these matchups so I'm trying to instead develop a gameplan that can largely ignore narrow artifact destruction and resolved Stony/GY hate altogether (putting less weight on needing to find the green spells I play). I've been testing things like Ego, as well as revisiting Ashiok and LOTV. Still not 100% sure what I'm sold on ahead of next weekend.
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I like your Krosan Grip idea.
@Dustycrumbz: Awesome report, thanks for writing it! Your list mentions Search for Azcanta a few times, but I don't see it in your list. But the main list is 59 cards, so I assume it's accurate if you just add Search?
Match 1 & 7: Assume your prison was just Damping Sphere to stop storm, and then Bridge to stop small warrens bits? What's your SB vs. Storm? Is Echoing Truth or any of their other bounce a problem for you?
Match 2 & 6: What's your SB plan vs. Jund?
Match 8: Isn't the best line with Thopter-Sword vs. Surgical, Spellbomb, etc. to leave one mana open and a backup artifact to sac, and make lands -1 thopters every turn?
This is also true for any CMC 2 or less that is a Spirit, it doesn't need to be a token from Moorland Haunt nor a Mauseloum Wanderer, it will also work with Rattlechains, Selfless Spirit and so on.
Edit: NVM, I thought you were trying to kill the Drogskol Captain
Yeah,I'm just not sold on scales being a legitimate answer to stony and RIP. First, you're pretty much assuming you're successfully hiding behind a bridge. In that case, if I wanted a whirrable target that hits the enchantments, I'd rather just play Spine of Ish Sah since I have the time to rack up lands and artifact behind bridge.
Edit: I've been splitting time between piloting this deck in competitive mtgo leagues, and brewing dumb decks for fun (with absolutely no success). But every time I play this deck in the current meta, I'm going 4-1 at worst. I just can't believe how well positioned it feels. Last league, I barely beat a bunch of fair GBx decks, so I put a tezz in the board for the first time in forever, which I know will make some people happy to hear. I've mostly been losing to infect and humans, so I dropped the surgicals for pushes as I already play 4 main deck spellbombs and a cage.
The way I see it, you’re trading the ‘cannot be countered’ clause and the ability to kill creatures/liliana for the ability to kill 3+ cmc artifacts and enchantments.
A couple questions:
1. Am I framing this correctly?
2. Which do you prefer?
3. Where does Assasin’s Trophy fit in? I personally am not a fan of the drawback and would never want to play a trophy on tuns 2-4.
Opinions appreciated <3
1.) Yes
2.) I prefer Abrupt Decay for a few reasons. Most of the Stony Silence decks are also the Blue decks with counters. Whether it be Mausoleum Wanderer or Cryptic Command I need to know that the 1-3 cards I am drawing to WILL work when I find them. In addition to that I often board them in as extra removal spells against specific decks like Humans.
3.) As of late I have been playing a ton of ATrophy in Sultai Midrange/Control style decks and have loved it there but am likely not to touch it here. Mostly because the utility is different. I don't NEED an all purpose answer, I need to kill Stony Silence, Rest in Peace and Thalia Guardian of Thraben. Why play Atrophy if it is actively worst in most scenarios that I need it? In midrange/control decks I play the card as a better Terminate paired with Fatal Push to negate most of the early ramping problem.
Sultai Midrange
Anything Innovative
I think it’s closer than it appears... Spirits run spell queller which ignores the uncounterable clause, and UW is typically holding up cryptic once you’re at the point where you have the combo and a trophy (cryptic bounce in response). Meanwhile, trophy hits leyline/worship etc at 4cmc which is pretty significant these days. I’m on trophy and again I think it’s really close. I don’t find the land drawback to be extremely Relevant in the matchups we need trophy since we’re definitely not turn 2/3ing trophy.
I've always liked Battle at the Bridge over fatal push as well. Sure instant speed is nice, but I like battle often being able to kill really anything. Maybe they've got a Platinum Emperion, or a Baneslayer Angel, so something indestructible, whatever. Plus the life gain is great. I've even just battle'd my own token to gain like 14 life before. I love Battle, but the maindeck trophy has kicked battle out of the main
I'd say just go for KCI - it's so much faster to assemble. Like I mentioned in an earlier post, it generates mana, so you can play it and then other cards in your hand, such as a top-decked sword.
So I generally dislike sideboard guides because you shouldn't blindly follow them as-is 100% of the time. That being said, I don't mind sharing what cards I look at bringing out/in as a general guideline to point you in the right direction:
Storm:
We want to be less about the combo and more about prison locking, though sometimes I'll keep some of the combo in if I'm on the play.
Out:
3x Serum Visions (neg tempo)
1x Search for Azcanta
1x Pithing Needle
1x Time Sieve
3x Sword
4x Foundry
1-2x Bridge
In:
1x Spellskite
1x Witchbane Orb
2x Thoughtseize
2x Abrupt Decay
3x Ego
2x Tezzeret
1x Padeem/Damnation (take note of how many warrens they had if you ego game 2 and go to game 3, adjust accordingly).
Jund
Here we want to mitigate the effects of their interaction by making sure our deck has less "air" and more density of impactful topdecks. All GBx decks should be approached similarly, but you'll need to tweak depending on if they have a 3rd color and whether it's white/red. I'm addressing Jund here specifically:
Out
3x Mox
1x Cage
1x Damp Sphere
1x Time Sieve
3x Brutality (they have more hand disruption than you, and since they're highly incentivized to keep it all in, you never want to try to fight them on that level)
In
1x Pithing Needle
1x Spellskite
2x Abrupt Decay
1x Damnation
2x Tezzeret
1x Padeem
1x Something like Witchbane or keep in cage as a cheap way to advance the board for whir/stop BBE
In regards to my round 8, you're absolutely right - that's how to play around surgical. However, my board state at the time had no excess artifacts. I took the conservative line by deploying artifacts in my hand to then protect the sword from surgical in the following turns, but his draws lined up in a way that punished my respect for surgical. Not sure if it was correct, all I know is that I got scared out of being aggressive from my previous punt against storm in G1 of R7.
I've been continuing to test some things ahead of my next tournament, mainly seeing if I can afford to ignore answers to things that decay can't hit by increasing the number of things that don't care about GY hate or even stony (much like grixis whir postboard). I don't know if I like the artifact density of my list's post board configuration enough to play Sai/Herald over other things for now.
Ego was good but not as great as I had hoped it'd be (again, I want to revisit this again in the near future). Instead, I've been testing a postboard with 1x LOTV (which I saw was in the_nobody's recent 5-0 list), 2x Ashiok, and 2x Tez. Most of the decks that play the things I want trophy/pulse for are strategies where I want to prioritize the bridge plan. I liked the idea of playing more walkers that cost less than 4 for curve considerations, which also allows easier double spell turns against control. Not having ego makes me a bit worse against combos like KCI, but LOTV can be a huge problem for anything trying to sculpt a hand and also has better cross applications to other matchups than ego. Ashiok was always a midrange/control killer in mirrors back in the day, and the cmc makes me feel better about bringing it in instead of more 4-drops like additional Tez/JTMS. It felt good the last few times I cast it (GBx and humans), we'll see if it continues to perform.
Let me know if anyone has any thoughts!
1) After playing with all three of them, the order of 1 CMC cantrips for this archetype is: Faithless Looting > Serum Visions > Ancient Stirrings. Faithless Looting is the best because you can discard a sword to enable Thopter-Foundry as early as T2 (with active Opal) or infinite on T3 (with KCI).
2) KCI is much, much more versatile than Time Sieve. I've played with both, and even with a deck with 4 Chromatic Star and 4 Terrarion Time Sieve just wasn't that great. By contrast, with Faithless Looting you can go infinite on T3 with Ironworks. It's so good I've started to consider additional copies to increase the odds of going infinite early. In close to 30 matches I've never wanted a Time Sieve.
3) After playing with them, I think the order of the 1 CMC artifacts is Pithing Needle > Pyrite Spellbomb > Nihil Spellbomb > Chromatic Star. My current opinion is that maybe your 1st Pyrite is good enough to play, and maybe your first Nihil is good enough to play, but generally Bridge just makes you not care about creatures, and Witchbane Orb and Damping Sphere make you mostly not care about spells from graveyards G1. On the other hand, you desperately want every Pithing Needle you can get your hands on vs. KCI, Tron, and Hardened Scales, which are all top tier decks. It's basically mainboarding a SB card that has high utility in specific places, and is a lovely mana rock otherwise.
I've now played two competitive MTGO leagues going 8-2 (4-1, 4-1). I cut videos of the second league, which you can find here: https://www.twitch.tv/tolariawest/manager/collections
2 Island
2 Inventors' Fair
4 Spire of Industry
4 Glimmervoid
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Spirebluff Canal
Spells
4 Faithless Looting
4 Whir of Invention
Creatures
1 Spellskite
4 Mox Opal
4 Mishra's Bauble
4 Welding Jar
4 Pithing Needle
1 Damping Sphere
4 Thopter Foundry
4 Sword of the Meek
4 Ensnaring Bridge
1 Witchbane Orb
1 Krark-Clan Ironworks
1 Grafdigger's Cage
3 Spellskite
2 Tezzeret the Seeker
4 Nahiri, the Harbinger
1 Emrakul, the Aeons Torn
2 Ghirapur Aether Grid
2 Sai, Master Thopterist
1) Many of our lists are heavily base blue with fetchlands and often we fetch for basic island. Without doing a major overhaul on the mana base and artifact spread to comfortably incorporate the 8x gold lands, Looting has a pseudo phyrexian mana tied to its cost a decent enough amount of time in this archetype that I couldn't justify it, especially since a lot of our matchups are razor thin already and every life point counts ahead of getting to a lock. I see you're not playing fetches but without changing the manabase most of us have found we like, even if you argue that fetch/shock serum deals the same damage as fetch/shock looting, the major difference is that unless you're straight UR, you shocked and still need another color with the looting line.
The list I've personally found I like has black as the secondary color and a light green splash for the board, but in reality, one of its greatest strengths is that it's happy playing primarily as a nearly mono blue deck and treats black as a splash (you only usually need the first black source). Again your take is going in a slightly different direction (not saying it's necessarily wrong by any means), but many of us have stuck with/gone back to serum over looting because we can't justify the adjustments it takes to make looting less painful.
2) Our lines are tight on mana, and sometimes we would rather the scry to see 3 cards deep and protect cards 2-3 from hand disruption rather than immediately draw them. Looting is better late and sees more cards overall with flashback, but serum is a spell I'm much more comfortable seeing with a 1-land hand for this reason and the point above.
I do think some of the things your list has incorporated are pretty neat though. Nahiri is certainly an interesting card out of the board. Keep up the testing, I'm interested to see how your list continues to develop!
1) I'm actually horrified that most people are playing fetch/shock manabases. In close to a quarter of my games I find I get as low as 1-2 life and turn things around from there. Sometimes I pay 1-2 life off a Spire, but usually I execute every spell painlessly. I worry that people are actually losing a considerable number of games to pain from their lands. Obviously, the alternative is that I am much more vulnerable to Blood Moon, but I think there are far more burn decks than blood moon decks, so I think this is the right way to skew vulnerability.
All that said, two colors have the advantage of less pain and less vulnerability to Blood Moon. I think there are good arguments for avoiding Looting and choosing Serum visions instead just to save life and manabase complexity. (Also, visions gets better when discard based decks are doing well, which is not right now, but could be true again in the future.) Especially if you're playing fewer than the full 4 Foundries plus Swords Serum Visions also gets better
since your chance of getting virtual mana in addition to card selection from Faithless Looting goes away. It's not just the card selection I'm into, but the fact that Looting can save as many as 2 mana by letting you play a 0 CMC card instead of paying the 2 CMC to cast sword.
2) Agreed, Serum Visions does help more with 1 land hands. I do occasionally have trouble casting Looting on T1 because I'm stretching. Reliability of U on turn 1 is a big deal.
3) Nahiri is possibly the real deal. I've won every game I've cast her, she has disenchanted multiple enchantments more than once. I also didn't appreciate how strong her looting ability is. Need more data, this is just drawing from 5 matches at this point.
@Al_Z_Heimer: I could see making a 1/1 split between Academy Ruins and Inventors' Fair. They are both Legendary, so I don't love drawing two of either of them. I like the way Ruins makes you able to infinitely not deck yourself, so you can win if you can just lock their win cons out. Ruins also performs really well against control since you can just re-run your threats over and over and over.
I noticed your deck has a lighter land count and fewer Opals, what's up with that?
There's also a drawback to playing 8 fastlands. That's a lot of lands coming into play tapped throughout the game, which can hurt in just as important ways as the life lost from fetchlands.
In the faithless looting/serum visions comparison, looting is great with a sword in hand, but when you don't, it forces you to make discard decisions that are not always easy. Can you consistently fire it off turn 1 on the play when you don't know what your opponent is on? We really only want swords in the yard, we don't play souls or bloodghast. Also, looting is a lot more dangerous vs surgical extraction, which is a common sideboard card these days, playable in literally every deck, and against leyline and RIP, looting loses a lot of its advantages.
I'm curious with your extensive Jeskai experience what you'd suggest I do with my SB? I'm *sure* I want the three Spellskites and the Grafdigger's Cage. I'm increasingly convinced I want a Torpor Orb even with the non-bo it presents with Thopter-Sword. But it's good enough that I think eating it if I'm ready to go off is worth the protection it brings. 2 Aether Grid has been just okay. It usually gets disenchanted or countered, so I guess it's doing it's job? But a lot of the time it represents pinging for just 1 or 2 a turn, which is decent but slow. Tezzeret the Seeker has been pretty good vs. BG/x decks, and I think two is the right amount. But, like, it seems like there must be better stuff than what I've found so far?
You make a great point about fastlands. I've thought it would be okay because most of my spells are CMC 3 or less, but I'll start paying attention more to see if I'm losing games because of that feature.
It is true there are cases where looting has some disadvantages, but I feel they pale in comparison to the times where it is a huge advantage. In 20 matches, I think I've only lost one game from discarding the wrong card to Looting. I've never had a sword extracted because of Looting, you just play carefully where appropriate. It is true that any deck can run extraction, but different decks run different hate for specific reasons, and Extraction mainly appears in decks that value spells (as opposed to creatures, enchantments, or artifacts).
As I mentioned previously, I've been trying to explore 2-3 mana high impact, alt Wincons that are serviceable in these matchups but also allow us to double spell on the turns we would otherwise be exposing ourselves to a single big spell. Grid fits the bill, but only if you've adjusted the artifact count to accommodate this gameplan (much like Sai/Herald demand). My list personally trims on the artifact count post board in these matchups so I'm trying to instead develop a gameplan that can largely ignore narrow artifact destruction and resolved Stony/GY hate altogether (putting less weight on needing to find the green spells I play). I've been testing things like Ego, as well as revisiting Ashiok and LOTV. Still not 100% sure what I'm sold on ahead of next weekend.