I regularly play against some sort of Control and i always do fine.
Ugliest Control-Deck at teh moment is UW because it's a crap bunch of removal and sweeper.
Grixis and Jeskai is kinda cakewalk - they are either too slow to keep up with our threats or rely heavily on a resolved Ancestral Vision.
Tron is an issue for us as we are intend to be too slow to keep up with them.
Does UW control give us problems? What do we board in or out?
How does everyone like seagatw wreckage? Been doing well for me.
It's essentially a hard-control deck, so our removal is lackluster.
I usually board Pithing Needle and maybe Ratchet Bomb against Secure the Wastes.
I tend to not board a lot of things because most of our stuff is good against them anyways.
Beware of Stony Silence - some Players try to shut off our Rocks
There greatest threat is Celestial Colonnade, a card we could likely get rid of.
Good cards against Uxx control in general include:
Cavern of Souls (obviously)
Lingering Souls (gives you two shots at landing a threat, makes Bolt/Path/Push bad)
Thoughtseize/IoK/Brutality (clear away counterspells before playing threats--especially good on T5 before playing Seer into T6 Smasher)
Shambling Vent (uncounterable--but mana hungry and dies to removal of all kinds)
Ghost Quarter (kills Creeping Tar Pit and Celestial Colonnade)
Relic (nerfs Snapcaster and slows down Delve creatures--leave mana open to threaten cracking it though!)
Pithing Needle, Ratchet Bomb, and Anguished Unmaking (and Smasher of course) are good against planeswalkers like Gideon and Elspeth in UW shells, or Nahiri in Jeskai
In general you need to play slower and more thoughtfully against Blue counterspells, landing one threat at a time. The exception would be when on the play it is often right to play a threat on T2 if possible--even a vanilla Strangler is better than getting your spell countered. Ensure as well as you can that Snapcaster can't hit targets in their graveyard. Sandbag a threat (Smasher is amazing) to run out if they leave the window open by tapping out. With all these tools at my disposal, I usually find that I win the best of 3 against Blue control decks. However UW control is a real pain in the ass because of all their sweepers. Fortunately I see very little UW on paper, because it is not very good lately and it takes forever to win, so timed matches tend to pressure the deck's play style.
Not a huge fan of the idea of splashing Red for any reason, let alone for a T4 play against Tron. The mana base won't support it.
Have you found Rest in Peace useful agains decks other than dredge? I am using 1 on my SB and always put it in and feel that if had drew it, i'd won. Decks like UW Emeria, Jeskai Assencion, dredge, living end, jund/junk (especially since it is probable they Will side out Abrupt Decay), and so on... Or is surgical just better to use because of valakut and tron? Right niw playing a split of both 1/1.
Good cards against Uxx control in general include:
Cavern of Souls (obviously)
Lingering Souls (gives you two shots at landing a threat, makes Bolt/Path/Push bad)
Thoughtseize/IoK/Brutality (clear away counterspells before playing threats--especially good on T5 before playing Seer into T6 Smasher)
Shambling Vent (uncounterable--but mana hungry and dies to removal of all kinds)
Ghost Quarter (kills Creeping Tar Pit and Celestial Colonnade)
Relic (nerfs Snapcaster and slows down Delve creatures--leave mana open to threaten cracking it though!)
Pithing Needle, Ratchet Bomb, and Anguished Unmaking (and Smasher of course) are good against planeswalkers like Gideon and Elspeth in UW shells, or Nahiri in Jeskai
In general you need to play slower and more thoughtfully against Blue counterspells, landing one threat at a time. The exception would be when on the play it is often right to play a threat on T2 if possible--even a vanilla Strangler is better than getting your spell countered. Ensure as well as you can that Snapcaster can't hit targets in their graveyard. Sandbag a threat (Smasher is amazing) to run out if they leave the window open by tapping out. With all these tools at my disposal, I usually find that I win the best of 3 against Blue control decks. However UW control is a real pain in the ass because of all their sweepers. Fortunately I see very little UW on paper, because it is not very good lately and it takes forever to win, so timed matches tend to pressure the deck's play style.
Not a huge fan of the idea of splashing Red for any reason, let alone for a T4 play against Tron. The mana base won't support it.
Thanks for the explanation. If control becomes popular should we consider eternal scourge over matter reshaper?
Hey guys, I'm heading to GP San Jose next week. Should I pick up this deck or Eldrazi Tron? What are the strengths and weaknesses compared to each other?
I was initially an early proponent of this deck, back when Eye was still legal (I posted in this very forum!), but its changed so much since, so I want to see which is doing better before I spend the $$ to upgrade my old deck in one direction or another.
Have you found Rest in Peace useful agains decks other than dredge? I am using 1 on my SB and always put it in and feel that if had drew it, i'd won. Decks like UW Emeria, Jeskai Assencion, dredge, living end, jund/junk (especially since it is probable they Will side out Abrupt Decay), and so on... Or is surgical just better to use because of valakut and tron? Right niw playing a split of both 1/1.
I usually board it against Grixis Control / Delver, maybe Jund / Junk.
It does affect all kinds of graveyard interaction (Goyf, Grim Flayer, Tasigur, Angler, Kolaghan's Command, Snapcaster, Kalitas,...).
Hey guys, I'm heading to GP San Jose next week. Should I pick up this deck or Eldrazi Tron? What are the strengths and weaknesses compared to each other?
I was initially an early proponent of this deck, back when Eye was still legal (I posted in this very forum!), but its changed so much since, so I want to see which is doing better before I spend the $$ to upgrade my old deck in one direction or another.
Hi Bunny, I remember you. Welcome back.
There's little doubt that the Tron build has put up some results and is generating buzz in a way that Processors hasn't done, so there's that.
Processors will be much better against any graveyard decks and probably also against pump aggro, especially in a blind game one. Tron isn't going to beat Infect, UR Prowess, or Death's Shadow Zoo (and at least the first two decks will definitely continue to see play) without an early Chalice, for instance. Processors has much, much more removal, hand disruption, and Lingering Souls, to help out there. However, if they DO land Chalice on T1/2 they are looking pretty good in those pump aggro matches.
Processors takes more damage from lands (though less from removal) but it also has more lifegain, so the Burn match might be a wash? Don't really know. But Collective Brutality is about the best card in the world to have to combat Burn, especially when you can discard Souls to it. But playing the Souls game plan--as opposed to the big spaghetti game plan--against Burn feels pretty bad, when they have Eidolon on the table.
Processors is amazing against Affinity. I very much doubt Tron can compete with us in that match. But Chalice on zero on the play G2/3 would be real good.
Processors is pretty weak to opposing Gx Tron builds and to Valakut decks. Tron is likely better here because it can often establish a faster clock, given a good draw. But Processors has Stony Silence and early hand disruption, which are very good hate against Gx Tron.
Maindeck Relic is extremely good against any decks running either Snapcaster or Goyf, AKA the two most commonly played creatures in Modern. Relic provides a lot of siding room in matches where it's not relevant, coming out easily for other cards. But Chalice works the same way in siding out, I think.
I played a Colorless Stompy build with Simian Spirit Guide, Gemstone Caverns, and Eternal Scourge (I also tried Serum Powder but ended up cutting that) for several weeks, and it was pretty amazing at times for sure. (In one match I had T1 Thought-Knot Seer in both G1 and G2, for instance.) However, I have little doubt that Processors is much better overall against the wider meta than that Stompy deck was. In general, Processors is much more interactive, and Stompy and Tron are much more linear.
My build of Processors does not worry about Blood Moon. If you want details about how it makes sure not to let this card wreck my day I can go into more depth here. Tron is likely to be much, much weaker to Moon.
Most opponents who see you play BW duals and Eldrazi will mistakenly put you on E&T, which can lead to play mistakes. Others will think you're on tokens if you open with discard into Lingering Souls. It is frequently possible to sandbag lands like Temple or Cavern of Souls to catch opponents by surprise.
It seems to me that the Tron build is likely to be higher variance, especially because there doesn't as yet seem to be a consensus build. It can't always assemble the Urzatron reliably (not that it is trying to in the same way Gx Tron is, of course), and it needs its Chalice hate in many matches. Like Vial decks, getting that crucial piece of early interaction, which you have only as a four-of, is a big deal for the Tron builds. (To be fair, we need our Relic hate in many matches too.) Processors has more cantrips (Relic, Mind Stone) and fewer dead draws (no drawing a Map when you already have Chalice in play, or Ulamog when you don't have the mana to cast him) but Tron has the potential to be much more explosive. Overall I'd expect Processors to be better in a meta with a lot of BGx, Dredge, pump aggro, Blood Moon, and Snapcaster decks. Tron will be better for sure against a big mana meta. Since going places in a GP requires both skill and luck, the higher variance of Tron might get you places if you get lucky with matchups and draws.
Hope that helps. That's all I can think of anyway. Let me know if you want a guide to beating Blood Moon with this deck. Also, please feel free to copypasta my remarks over to the other thread to see what they think about my ideas. Good luck!
P.S.: I feel confident in saying that Smasher is much better than Herder nowadays, unless you expect a lot of Blue counterspells. The build has changed a lot from the old days.
Have you found Rest in Peace useful agains decks other than dredge? I am using 1 on my SB and always put it in and feel that if had drew it, i'd won. Decks like UW Emeria, Jeskai Assencion, dredge, living end, jund/junk (especially since it is probable they Will side out Abrupt Decay), and so on... Or is surgical just better to use because of valakut and tron? Right niw playing a split of both 1/1.
Rest is real good, but it does nerf our own Souls. I have played it at times, but don't think it's the correct angle right now. Getting both GQ and Extraction against Tron and Valakut is not a very good plan, but it is a plan at least. A good trick against Dredge is to Extract their Bloodghasts (NOT their Amalgams) since the Amalgam usually relies on the the Ghast to get into play more than once. Always Extract in response to the trigger or, failing that, on their draw step after they draw, to see one more card in hand and possibly even hit the card they just drew, making it a dead draw step.
Thanks for the explanation. If control becomes popular should we consider eternal scourge over matter reshaper?
I have tried Scourge and could see him as a one-of, but I wasn't super impressed TBH. He was really, really slow.
One feature of my approach to the deck is that I don't feel constrained in siding out all my Relics in matches where they don't hurt my opponent. Putting in cards like Herder and Scourge makes that less feasible. I don't really want Relic to be primarily about building my own game plan, I want it to be primarily about hurting my opponent, wherever possible.
I've been turning over Push (and Mimic) in my head a LOT while I am not so busy with work and also not able to play cards this week. Here's what I am thinking as of now.
I think Push nudges us towards 4x Reshaper and 3x Strangler, cutting a Relic in part to make room for more than one copy of Push. Fatal Push kills things much better than Wasteland Strangler does, and Matter Reshaper is much better against opposing Pushes than Strangler is. Relics are still important, but considering that playing Push also makes running 4x Path to Exile worse, Strangler is starting to feel some pressure from multiple directions. Reshaper's replacement ability helps to offset losing a Relic draw as well.
I think Mimic could possibly lead to a very different CBW Processors variant altogether. It is true that T2 plays are somewhat lacking in the deck, though to be honest I don't find this to be a huge problem because the deck's gameplan is built around different sequencing. But if Processors did run Metallic Mimic, I think it makes Blight Herder better than Reality Smasher, maybe. (And I say that as a true believer that Smasher is currently far stronger than Herder, overall.) Mimic + Tokens + Sorin, Solemn Visitor could be busted wide open, I think. The tokens could be Spirits or Scions, doesn't really matter, and multiple Mimics in play would be nuts. I could see cutting several Stranglers for Mimic, with the intent of saving our exiled Processing targets for Herder. Thus would probably entail running 4x Path, plus 3-4x Push, to keep the exile flowing but also the creature removal count high. (Note that Scions easily turn on Revolt.)
BUT, getting Herder live turns out in practice to be MUCH harder than getting Strangler live, I can say from experience. And, assuming that Relic is still the best way to feed Processing--and I think it is--this approach would weaken us to decks that don't fill the yard. This build would go big on BW duals and lower on C lands. It would be easy to cut Vault, Cavern of Souls, and Wastes if we had a lot of other lifelink and fewer EMN Eldrazi, for instance. Then it would run Tidehollow Sculler(and maybe Eldrazi Displacer too? Having Mimic on the battlefield makes him Bolt-proof) but no Smasher or Reshaper. Displacer's flicker ability could use both Sculler and Thought-Knot Seer(which would become our only C-reliant card) to help enable Processing more reliably. With more duals and tokens, 2x Sorin starts to look really, really good. However this deck idea sounds potentially very slow to me, and I would probably only work if the entire meta slows down significantly, which I think is unlikely.
Honestly, I am not so sure about all that Mimic theory crafting, because Mimic dies to everything in a deck that otherwise makes removal bad. But anyway, that's my thoughts right now.
Hi everyone! Working on this deck again after almost a year's hiatus. Here are my thoughts. Warning: a lot of text incoming.
I've spent most of that time playing various linear decks, but during Modern PPTQ season, I played to great success a BR Processors deck inspired by the list Joe Soh top 16'd with at GP Guangzhou at the end of August last year. That BR deck was better positioned than BW at the time since Lightning Bolt was generally a lot better against the linear-aggro field I expected at the time - Infect, Affinity, and so on. To give you an idea of what this deck looked like, here's a list that I made the finals of a ~60 person PPTQ with (my carmate was 1st place, so we had a pretty good car!):
Lessons that I think are relevant to this deck from my PPTQ season:
1) Hangarback Walker looks like garbage but it is actually really good, and it gets better in a Fatal Push metagame. The deck is dying for a turn 2 play when you don't have a Temple, and this is a card that buys time in the early game and becomes a ridiculous threat in the late game against any deck that doesn't have access to Path. The reason why we didn't care about having a card like this before Pro Tour OGW broke the format open was as follows: (a) the format was a lot slower since Twin had just been banned and people didn't catch up quite yet (b) 2-3 Eye of Ugin is a lot more than zero.
Anyway, Walker saved my ass again and again versus a huge multitude of aggressive decks. I think this thread's decision to run with Matter Reshaper is not unreasonable, but I think you all should give Walker a try.
2) Smasher > Herder now, and I think this is something you all have agreed on and understood, as far as I can tell.
3) Blackcleave Cliffs is awesome, and we should try to run a lot of Concealed Courtyards now that we have all kinds of 1-cmc spells to cast early on. I know Path isn't the best turn 1 play, but regardless sometimes you need to hold your nose and do it, especially versus the most explosive aggro decks. Legitimately don't understand the complete lack of enthusiasm here! Ghost Quarter is also awesome and solves many problems.
I made some minimal changes to the BR list and went to a 34-person IQ. I scrubbed at 2-3, beating Ponza and Mill, losing to Burn, Affinity, and a BR Boom/Bust deck. My losses to Burn and Affinity were extremely close. I misplayed a few times mainly because I haven't played Modern in a few months (Legacy Champs + GP Louisville put all my MtG time on Legacy), and I think the tournament could have gone much better for me if I were sharper. But regardless it was a very educational tournament. This is what I ran:
1) Fatal Push is not Lightning Bolt. IDK why I thought it was a good idea to run so many removal spells that have no other utility on an empty board, but I routinely found myself with extremely reactive hands that could not appropriately interact with decks like Burn or Affinity. You need to interact on the board; you just can't keep up with mono-removal. Definitely need to cut down to like 6 or so. Maybe -1 Push, -1 Path. I'd like to make room for Displacers in these slots since it's sort of like removal but also a 3/3 and a Revolt enabler if you're really desperate.
2) Smasher looks a lot worse without appropriate creature support, see (1). I think it's still better than Herder but its best when you can bait out some removal spells before you play it. With today's configuration, it looked a little anemic.
3) Mind Stone seems like a good idea to have another good 2 to play (and again, it enables Revolt). I don't know if I want more than 1-2 of this, but I'll certainly try it out. Double and triple Relic hands look a lot more awkward now that Dredge and Become Immense aren't as worrisome, so a Relic is the natural thing to cut to make room for this.
Decided to continue with BW over Tron. I don't know what the meta at the GP will be like, so I want to be as flexible as possible. However, given the recent bans and Fatal Push being printed, I've made my list as anti-tron as possible without sacrificing points in other matchups. Would collective brutality be a good fit given its versatility? I tested anguished unmaking, but the three life really hurts. Oblivion ring as a singleton accomplishes the same thing, but without that annoying three life loss. I just hope not to run into any abrupt decays or esper charms.
Decided to continue with BW over Tron. I don't know what the meta at the GP will be like, so I want to be as flexible as possible. However, given the recent bans and Fatal Push being printed, I've made my list as anti-tron as possible without sacrificing points in other matchups. Would collective brutality be a good fit given its versatility? I tested anguished unmaking, but the three life really hurts. Oblivion ring as a singleton accomplishes the same thing, but without that annoying three life loss. I just hope not to run into any abrupt decays or esper charms.
The list is looking good. Personally I would cut a relic, matter reshaper, and wasteland strangler to add another mind stone and 2x eldrazi displacers. I would find a way to put at least 1 anguished unmaking within your 75 and possibly another pithing needle in the side. I am liking the Crucible of Worlds in the sideboard. I assume that is for a ghost quarter "lock" against scapeshift and tron?
This is the MB im testing with Fatal Push, i will try 2 Eternal Scourge instead 2 Matter of Reshaper, they work for me in me B/R Processor List so im gonna test them here if control go up and they pass the new Fatal Push test.
This is the MB im testing with Fatal Push, i will try 2 Eternal Scourge instead 2 Matter of Reshaper, they work for me in me B/R Processor List so im gonna test them here if control go up and they pass the new Fatal Push test.
Nice list but I feel that running 13-ish removal (collective brutality, path to exile, anguished unmaking, fatal push, and wasteland strangler) is just too many unless you only play against zoo decks in your meta. I would add some more creatures. Once you get some marsh flats I would cut 1 swamp, 1 plains, and urborg for 3x marsh flats to get up to 14 untapped B sources in order to play a discard spell on turn 1.
This is the land mana base that i was planning after the marsh flasts arrive from the seller. For the removal i was thinking to take out a Path of Exile and add a reality Smasher, i want to add a extra eternal scourge without remove to put the deck in 15 creatures but im not sure the card to take out. I like playing with 5 discars + Collective Brutality.
Maybe with 2 Eternal Scourge is enough because i cant recast them a lot of times.
Hi everyone! Working on this deck again after almost a year's hiatus. Here are my thoughts. Warning: a lot of text incoming.
I've spent most of that time playing various linear decks, but during Modern PPTQ season, I played to great success a BR Processors deck inspired by the list Joe Soh top 16'd with at GP Guangzhou at the end of August last year. That BR deck was better positioned than BW at the time since Lightning Bolt was generally a lot better against the linear-aggro field I expected at the time - Infect, Affinity, and so on. To give you an idea of what this deck looked like, here's a list that I made the finals of a ~60 person PPTQ with (my carmate was 1st place, so we had a pretty good car!):
Lessons that I think are relevant to this deck from my PPTQ season:
1) Hangarback Walker looks like garbage but it is actually really good, and it gets better in a Fatal Push metagame. The deck is dying for a turn 2 play when you don't have a Temple, and this is a card that buys time in the early game and becomes a ridiculous threat in the late game against any deck that doesn't have access to Path. The reason why we didn't care about having a card like this before Pro Tour OGW broke the format open was as follows: (a) the format was a lot slower since Twin had just been banned and people didn't catch up quite yet (b) 2-3 Eye of Ugin is a lot more than zero.
Anyway, Walker saved my ass again and again versus a huge multitude of aggressive decks. I think this thread's decision to run with Matter Reshaper is not unreasonable, but I think you all should give Walker a try.
2) Smasher > Herder now, and I think this is something you all have agreed on and understood, as far as I can tell.
3) Blackcleave Cliffs is awesome, and we should try to run a lot of Concealed Courtyards now that we have all kinds of 1-cmc spells to cast early on. I know Path isn't the best turn 1 play, but regardless sometimes you need to hold your nose and do it, especially versus the most explosive aggro decks. Legitimately don't understand the complete lack of enthusiasm here! Ghost Quarter is also awesome and solves many problems.
I made some minimal changes to the BR list and went to a 34-person IQ. I scrubbed at 2-3, beating Ponza and Mill, losing to Burn, Affinity, and a BR Boom/Bust deck. My losses to Burn and Affinity were extremely close. I misplayed a few times mainly because I haven't played Modern in a few months (Legacy Champs + GP Louisville put all my MtG time on Legacy), and I think the tournament could have gone much better for me if I were sharper. But regardless it was a very educational tournament. This is what I ran:
1) Fatal Push is not Lightning Bolt. IDK why I thought it was a good idea to run so many removal spells that have no other utility on an empty board, but I routinely found myself with extremely reactive hands that could not appropriately interact with decks like Burn or Affinity. You need to interact on the board; you just can't keep up with mono-removal. Definitely need to cut down to like 6 or so. Maybe -1 Push, -1 Path. I'd like to make room for Displacers in these slots since it's sort of like removal but also a 3/3 and a Revolt enabler if you're really desperate.
2) Smasher looks a lot worse without appropriate creature support, see (1). I think it's still better than Herder but its best when you can bait out some removal spells before you play it. With today's configuration, it looked a little anemic.
3) Mind Stone seems like a good idea to have another good 2 to play (and again, it enables Revolt). I don't know if I want more than 1-2 of this, but I'll certainly try it out. Double and triple Relic hands look a lot more awkward now that Dredge and Become Immense aren't as worrisome, so a Relic is the natural thing to cut to make room for this.
Hangarback Walker seems like it could be pretty good on T2. It would definitely be very good when held back with 1 up--like ideally from an untapped Ghost Quarter--when also threatening a Relic crack. That would be three lines of instant-speed interaction off one mana. It's better than Reshaper under Blood Moon. It would be a great late-game-topdeck-war card, far better than Reshaper. But Walker has a couple caveats, it seems to me. It dies to un-Revolted Push, and doesn't benefit from Cavern of Souls or Temple. It's much slower in the early game, and unlike Reshaper, it makes a great Bolt target when played early-on. Its "dies" ability is probably worse than Reshaper's unless it has at least two counters on it, for instance; and if you activate its self-pump, Bolt in response nets you zero additional tokens. Like Relic, it prioritizes keeping up available mana in a deck that can be mana-hungry as it is, which can lead to playing off-curve. It conflicts with Mind Stone for the T2 play, and unlike Stone it doesn't ramp to Seer, Sorin, and Smasher. (Though, also unlike Stone, it is actually a proactive threat.) It makes Stony Silence and Pithing Needle better against us--not sure if that last actually matters so much, though. Overall, to me Walker looks lower floor, higher ceiling, compared to Reshaper.
****
Concealed Courtyard is great, but so is Shambling Vent. Tough call on the right balance. I thought I'd try to do a little math here. My reckoning suggests:
With six T1 B spells you could cast in a 60 card list, the odds of seeing at least one of them in your opener are 54.1%;
With seven such spells, the odds are 60.1%;
With eight such spells, the odds are 65.4%. (The Law of Diminishing Returns is illustrated nicely here.)
Depending on your land mix, I reckon the odds of having the mana to cast such a spell (assuming that you have drawn one in your opener here), in a 60 card list, are:
Out of the six cards left to be drawn (that are NOT the B-cost spell we already drew), there is a 75.5% chance to get a T1 source for B with 12 ETB untapped sources;
There is a 78.5% chance with 13 sources;
And there is a 81.3% chance with 14 sources. (The LDR again, here.)
(All this assumes we are keeping the opening seven, regardless of any of the other cards in hand, which is why my numbers differ from Frank Karsten's.)
****
Still not too sold on running Eldrazi Displacer in this build, because it automatically becomes the best target for Bolt in our entire deck. But it's amazing when it sticks, though, it's true.
****
I played Oblivion Ring for quite a while and decided that I wanted the instant speed and protection from Decay, Maelstrom Pulse, Qasali Pridemage, etc. But I have definitely found that I couldn't cast Unmaking before, due to either mana availability or life total, so it's a judgment call. Specifically regarding Tron, note that O-Ring is vulnerable to many of their cards, including Oblivion Stone, Karn Liberated, and Nature's Claim out of the side.
Hangarback Walker seems like it could be pretty good on T2. It would definitely be very good when held back with 1 up--like ideally from an untapped Ghost Quarter--when also threatening a Relic crack. That would be three lines of instant-speed interaction off one mana. It's better than Reshaper under Blood Moon. It would be a great late-game-topdeck-war card, far better than Reshaper. But Walker has a couple caveats, it seems to me. It dies to un-Revolted Push, and doesn't benefit from Cavern of Souls or Temple. It's much slower in the early game, and like Relic, it prioritizes keeping up available mana in a deck that can be mana-hungry as it is, which can lead to playing off-curve. It conflicts with Mind Stone for the T2 play, and unlike Stone it doesn't ramp to Seer, Sorin, and Smasher. (Though, also unlike Stone, it is actually a proactive threat.) It makes Stony Silence and Pithing Needle better against us--not sure if that last actually matters so much, though.
On the caveats:
1) If they kill Walker with a Push, that's positive value for us. It doesn't change the amount of power on our board at all and they're down a card. I hope they blow their removal on that and not TKS. As for Stony Silence and Pithing Needle, I am happy if our opponents bring that in against us. Our artifacts are not our primary threats. I mean, we ourselves are siding in Stony Silence from our own board...
2) Blue control decks are both unpopular and even-to-positive matchups since you have Souls and huge threats that you can pace one at a time. Not super happy about running Cavern at all. No synergy with Temple is a legit concern, but Walker is there to do something when you don't have a Temple. If you do have a Temple, hopefully you have something decent to cast.
3) Playing Walker with Mind Stone seems fine - I think the deck would like more than a few 2's, since you don't have Temple in your opener about half of the time. When Temple is there, you're in business so whatever, and when it's not, you need to do something proactive on turn 2, and I can totally see situations where one or the other is better. Mind Stone is a good plan when you're not being pressured (to set up TKS and so forth) and Walker is a good plan when you're on defense. Here's a line that comes up occasionally. You keep a hand with no Temple, play turn 1 Relic or whatever, and your opponent responds with turn 1 Goblin Guide or Nacatl or Swiftspear or whatever. Hangarback Walker saves you at least 2 life by blocking and possibly more if you follow up with any 3 or 4-drop (which also blocks).
Concealed Courtyard is great, but so is Shambling Vent. Tough call on the right balance. Still not too sold on running Eldrazi Displacer in this build, because it automatically becomes the best target for Bolt in our entire deck. But it's amazing when it sticks, though, it's true.
Vent is definitely a good card, and it could be right to play some, but lists here that run like 0 or 1 Courtyard seem wrong to me, that's all. Untapped dual lands are really good, especially in games where we're just trying to stall to TKS and Smasher.
I'm not sold on Displacer either, this is for sure experimental. I can easily see it being extremely bad just because we usually don't have time to activate it if we play it on t2 or t3, and playing a 3/3 for 3 that often gets no value is definitely not what I'm trying to do with this deck's best draws.
I played Oblivion Ring for quite a while and decided that I wanted the instant speed and protection from Decay, Maelstrom Pulse, Qasali Pridemage, etc. But I have definitely found that I couldn't cast Unmaking before, due to either mana availability or life total, so it's a judgment call. Specifically regarding Tron, note that O-Ring is vulnerable to many of their cards, including Oblivion Stone, Karn Liberated, and Nature's Claim out of the side.
Unmaking seems too hard to cast and too slow when you're deploying it as anything except planeswalker removal. I'm pretty happy with Disenchant, to be honest. Our creature and removal suite is already pretty good at battling planeswalkers, and I'm not convinced we need a card specifically for them. I'd rather play Celestial Purge if I were in the market for such a spell since honestly all the commonly-played planeswalkers I'm afraid of are black or red except Karn (and your plan versus Karn is to strip it from hand and/or stop Tron from getting assembled).
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Does UW control give us problems? What do we board in or out?
How does everyone like seagatw wreckage? Been doing well for me.
I usually board Pithing Needle and maybe Ratchet Bomb against Secure the Wastes.
I tend to not board a lot of things because most of our stuff is good against them anyways.
Beware of Stony Silence - some Players try to shut off our Rocks
There greatest threat is Celestial Colonnade, a card we could likely get rid of.
Green @ it's best
Not a huge fan of the idea of splashing Red for any reason, let alone for a T4 play against Tron. The mana base won't support it.
Thanks for the explanation. If control becomes popular should we consider eternal scourge over matter reshaper?
I was initially an early proponent of this deck, back when Eye was still legal (I posted in this very forum!), but its changed so much since, so I want to see which is doing better before I spend the $$ to upgrade my old deck in one direction or another.
I usually board it against Grixis Control / Delver, maybe Jund / Junk.
It does affect all kinds of graveyard interaction (Goyf, Grim Flayer, Tasigur, Angler, Kolaghan's Command, Snapcaster, Kalitas,...).
Green @ it's best
There's little doubt that the Tron build has put up some results and is generating buzz in a way that Processors hasn't done, so there's that.
Processors will be much better against any graveyard decks and probably also against pump aggro, especially in a blind game one. Tron isn't going to beat Infect, UR Prowess, or Death's Shadow Zoo (and at least the first two decks will definitely continue to see play) without an early Chalice, for instance. Processors has much, much more removal, hand disruption, and Lingering Souls, to help out there. However, if they DO land Chalice on T1/2 they are looking pretty good in those pump aggro matches.
Processors takes more damage from lands (though less from removal) but it also has more lifegain, so the Burn match might be a wash? Don't really know. But Collective Brutality is about the best card in the world to have to combat Burn, especially when you can discard Souls to it. But playing the Souls game plan--as opposed to the big spaghetti game plan--against Burn feels pretty bad, when they have Eidolon on the table.
Processors is amazing against Affinity. I very much doubt Tron can compete with us in that match. But Chalice on zero on the play G2/3 would be real good.
Processors is pretty weak to opposing Gx Tron builds and to Valakut decks. Tron is likely better here because it can often establish a faster clock, given a good draw. But Processors has Stony Silence and early hand disruption, which are very good hate against Gx Tron.
Maindeck Relic is extremely good against any decks running either Snapcaster or Goyf, AKA the two most commonly played creatures in Modern. Relic provides a lot of siding room in matches where it's not relevant, coming out easily for other cards. But Chalice works the same way in siding out, I think.
I played a Colorless Stompy build with Simian Spirit Guide, Gemstone Caverns, and Eternal Scourge (I also tried Serum Powder but ended up cutting that) for several weeks, and it was pretty amazing at times for sure. (In one match I had T1 Thought-Knot Seer in both G1 and G2, for instance.) However, I have little doubt that Processors is much better overall against the wider meta than that Stompy deck was. In general, Processors is much more interactive, and Stompy and Tron are much more linear.
My build of Processors does not worry about Blood Moon. If you want details about how it makes sure not to let this card wreck my day I can go into more depth here. Tron is likely to be much, much weaker to Moon.
Most opponents who see you play BW duals and Eldrazi will mistakenly put you on E&T, which can lead to play mistakes. Others will think you're on tokens if you open with discard into Lingering Souls. It is frequently possible to sandbag lands like Temple or Cavern of Souls to catch opponents by surprise.
It seems to me that the Tron build is likely to be higher variance, especially because there doesn't as yet seem to be a consensus build. It can't always assemble the Urzatron reliably (not that it is trying to in the same way Gx Tron is, of course), and it needs its Chalice hate in many matches. Like Vial decks, getting that crucial piece of early interaction, which you have only as a four-of, is a big deal for the Tron builds. (To be fair, we need our Relic hate in many matches too.) Processors has more cantrips (Relic, Mind Stone) and fewer dead draws (no drawing a Map when you already have Chalice in play, or Ulamog when you don't have the mana to cast him) but Tron has the potential to be much more explosive. Overall I'd expect Processors to be better in a meta with a lot of BGx, Dredge, pump aggro, Blood Moon, and Snapcaster decks. Tron will be better for sure against a big mana meta. Since going places in a GP requires both skill and luck, the higher variance of Tron might get you places if you get lucky with matchups and draws.
Hope that helps. That's all I can think of anyway. Let me know if you want a guide to beating Blood Moon with this deck. Also, please feel free to copypasta my remarks over to the other thread to see what they think about my ideas. Good luck!
P.S.: I feel confident in saying that Smasher is much better than Herder nowadays, unless you expect a lot of Blue counterspells. The build has changed a lot from the old days.
One feature of my approach to the deck is that I don't feel constrained in siding out all my Relics in matches where they don't hurt my opponent. Putting in cards like Herder and Scourge makes that less feasible. I don't really want Relic to be primarily about building my own game plan, I want it to be primarily about hurting my opponent, wherever possible.
Do not expect him as a kind of game-breaking card.
It's a great synergy-based tool for grindy games and a useful 1-of.
It's great against a bunch of spot-removal and a spicy mana-sink sometimes.
But nothing more or above it.
The synergies with collective brutality and relic of progenitus can't be denied.
It's kinda-like flex-spot for your local meta.
Green @ it's best
I think Push nudges us towards 4x Reshaper and 3x Strangler, cutting a Relic in part to make room for more than one copy of Push. Fatal Push kills things much better than Wasteland Strangler does, and Matter Reshaper is much better against opposing Pushes than Strangler is. Relics are still important, but considering that playing Push also makes running 4x Path to Exile worse, Strangler is starting to feel some pressure from multiple directions. Reshaper's replacement ability helps to offset losing a Relic draw as well.
I think Mimic could possibly lead to a very different CBW Processors variant altogether. It is true that T2 plays are somewhat lacking in the deck, though to be honest I don't find this to be a huge problem because the deck's gameplan is built around different sequencing. But if Processors did run Metallic Mimic, I think it makes Blight Herder better than Reality Smasher, maybe. (And I say that as a true believer that Smasher is currently far stronger than Herder, overall.) Mimic + Tokens + Sorin, Solemn Visitor could be busted wide open, I think. The tokens could be Spirits or Scions, doesn't really matter, and multiple Mimics in play would be nuts. I could see cutting several Stranglers for Mimic, with the intent of saving our exiled Processing targets for Herder. Thus would probably entail running 4x Path, plus 3-4x Push, to keep the exile flowing but also the creature removal count high. (Note that Scions easily turn on Revolt.)
BUT, getting Herder live turns out in practice to be MUCH harder than getting Strangler live, I can say from experience. And, assuming that Relic is still the best way to feed Processing--and I think it is--this approach would weaken us to decks that don't fill the yard. This build would go big on BW duals and lower on C lands. It would be easy to cut Vault, Cavern of Souls, and Wastes if we had a lot of other lifelink and fewer EMN Eldrazi, for instance. Then it would run Tidehollow Sculler (and maybe Eldrazi Displacer too? Having Mimic on the battlefield makes him Bolt-proof) but no Smasher or Reshaper. Displacer's flicker ability could use both Sculler and Thought-Knot Seer (which would become our only C-reliant card) to help enable Processing more reliably. With more duals and tokens, 2x Sorin starts to look really, really good. However this deck idea sounds potentially very slow to me, and I would probably only work if the entire meta slows down significantly, which I think is unlikely.
Honestly, I am not so sure about all that Mimic theory crafting, because Mimic dies to everything in a deck that otherwise makes removal bad. But anyway, that's my thoughts right now.
I've spent most of that time playing various linear decks, but during Modern PPTQ season, I played to great success a BR Processors deck inspired by the list Joe Soh top 16'd with at GP Guangzhou at the end of August last year. That BR deck was better positioned than BW at the time since Lightning Bolt was generally a lot better against the linear-aggro field I expected at the time - Infect, Affinity, and so on. To give you an idea of what this deck looked like, here's a list that I made the finals of a ~60 person PPTQ with (my carmate was 1st place, so we had a pretty good car!):
1 Blood Crypt
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Eldrazi Temple
4 Ghost Quarter
1 Mountain
4 Sulfurous Springs
2 Swamp
3 Hangarback Walker
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet
4 Reality Smasher
4 Thought-Knot Seer
3 Wasteland Strangler
2 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Slaughter Pact
3 Terminate
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
4 Relic of Progenitus
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Thoughtseize
2 Blight Herder
2 Collective Brutality
2 Damnation
2 Duress
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Ob Nixilis Reignited
1 Slaughter Games
2 Surgical Extraction
1 Vandalblast
Lessons that I think are relevant to this deck from my PPTQ season:
1) Hangarback Walker looks like garbage but it is actually really good, and it gets better in a Fatal Push metagame. The deck is dying for a turn 2 play when you don't have a Temple, and this is a card that buys time in the early game and becomes a ridiculous threat in the late game against any deck that doesn't have access to Path. The reason why we didn't care about having a card like this before Pro Tour OGW broke the format open was as follows: (a) the format was a lot slower since Twin had just been banned and people didn't catch up quite yet (b) 2-3 Eye of Ugin is a lot more than zero.
Anyway, Walker saved my ass again and again versus a huge multitude of aggressive decks. I think this thread's decision to run with Matter Reshaper is not unreasonable, but I think you all should give Walker a try.
2) Smasher > Herder now, and I think this is something you all have agreed on and understood, as far as I can tell.
3) Blackcleave Cliffs is awesome, and we should try to run a lot of Concealed Courtyards now that we have all kinds of 1-cmc spells to cast early on. I know Path isn't the best turn 1 play, but regardless sometimes you need to hold your nose and do it, especially versus the most explosive aggro decks. Legitimately don't understand the complete lack of enthusiasm here! Ghost Quarter is also awesome and solves many problems.
I made some minimal changes to the BR list and went to a 34-person IQ. I scrubbed at 2-3, beating Ponza and Mill, losing to Burn, Affinity, and a BR Boom/Bust deck. My losses to Burn and Affinity were extremely close. I misplayed a few times mainly because I haven't played Modern in a few months (Legacy Champs + GP Louisville put all my MtG time on Legacy), and I think the tournament could have gone much better for me if I were sharper. But regardless it was a very educational tournament. This is what I ran:
4 Lingering Souls
4 Reality Smasher
4 Thought-Knot Seer
3 Wasteland Strangler
4 Fatal Push
4 Path to Exile
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
4 Relic of Progenitus
1 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
4 Concealed Courtyard
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Ghost Quarter
1 Godless Shrine
4 Marsh Flats
1 Plains
2 Swamp
1 Vault of the Archangel
2 Blight Herder
2 Collective Brutality
1 Damnation
2 Disenchant
2 Duress
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Stony Silence
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Things I learned:
1) Fatal Push is not Lightning Bolt. IDK why I thought it was a good idea to run so many removal spells that have no other utility on an empty board, but I routinely found myself with extremely reactive hands that could not appropriately interact with decks like Burn or Affinity. You need to interact on the board; you just can't keep up with mono-removal. Definitely need to cut down to like 6 or so. Maybe -1 Push, -1 Path. I'd like to make room for Displacers in these slots since it's sort of like removal but also a 3/3 and a Revolt enabler if you're really desperate.
2) Smasher looks a lot worse without appropriate creature support, see (1). I think it's still better than Herder but its best when you can bait out some removal spells before you play it. With today's configuration, it looked a little anemic.
3) Mind Stone seems like a good idea to have another good 2 to play (and again, it enables Revolt). I don't know if I want more than 1-2 of this, but I'll certainly try it out. Double and triple Relic hands look a lot more awkward now that Dredge and Become Immense aren't as worrisome, so a Relic is the natural thing to cut to make room for this.
Going forward, here's what I'd like to try:
3 Hangarback Walker
4 Lingering Souls
4 Reality Smasher
4 Thought-Knot Seer
3 Wasteland Strangler
3 Fatal Push
3 Path to Exile
3 Inquisition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
3 Relic of Progenitus
1 Mind Stone
1 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
4 Concealed Courtyard
4 Eldrazi Temple
3 Ghost Quarter
1 Godless Shrine
4 Marsh Flats
1 Plains
2 Swamp
1 Vault of the Archangel
2 Blight Herder
2 Collective Brutality
1 Damnation
2 Disenchant
2 Duress
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Stony Silence
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Any comments would be great.
4x Caves of Koilos
1x Concealed Courtyard
4x Eldrazi Temple
4x Ghost Quarter
2x Godless Shrine
3x Marsh Flats
1x Plains
2x Shambling Vent
1x Swamp
1x Wastes
1x Vault of the Archangel
1x Mind Stone
4x Relic of Progenitus
Instant (6)
2x Fatal Push
4x Path to Exile
Creature (16)
4x Matter Reshaper
4x Reality Smasher
4x Thought-Knot Seer
4x Wasteland Strangler
Sorcery (7)
4x Lingering Souls
3x Thoughtseize
Planeswalker (1)
1x Sorin, Solemn Visitor
1x Oblivion Ring
2x Blessed Alliance
1x Wrath of God
1x Zealous Persecution
1x Pithing Needle
2x Stony Silence
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Crucible of Worlds
2x Disenchant
2x Celestial Purge
The list is looking good. Personally I would cut a relic, matter reshaper, and wasteland strangler to add another mind stone and 2x eldrazi displacers. I would find a way to put at least 1 anguished unmaking within your 75 and possibly another pithing needle in the side. I am liking the Crucible of Worlds in the sideboard. I assume that is for a ghost quarter "lock" against scapeshift and tron?
CBW midrange deck
CBW eldrazi processor deck
CBW bw eldrazi shadow midrange
1x Urborg, Tomb of Yawgomoth
1x Vault of the Archangel
2x Godless Shrine
4x Concealed Courtyard
4x Eldrazi Temple
2x Shambling Vents
4x Caves of Koilos
2x Ghost Quarter
2x Plain
2x Swamp
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Thoughtseize
1x Collective Brutality
1x Anguished Unmaking
4x Path to exile
3x Fatal Push
4x Lingering Souls
1x Sorin, Solemn Visitor
Artifacts
4x Relic of Progenitus
Creatures
3x Reality Smasher
2x Eternal Scourge
4x Thought-Knot Seer
4x Wasteland Strangler
Waiting for some Marsh Flats
BWC Processors Eldrazi CWB
UBC Emerge EldraziCBU
C Tron Eldrazi C
RBC Meld Eldrazi CBR
GU Tokens Eldrazi UG
Nice list but I feel that running 13-ish removal (collective brutality, path to exile, anguished unmaking, fatal push, and wasteland strangler) is just too many unless you only play against zoo decks in your meta. I would add some more creatures. Once you get some marsh flats I would cut 1 swamp, 1 plains, and urborg for 3x marsh flats to get up to 14 untapped B sources in order to play a discard spell on turn 1.
CBW midrange deck
CBW eldrazi processor deck
CBW bw eldrazi shadow midrange
Maybe with 2 Eternal Scourge is enough because i cant recast them a lot of times.
2x Godless Shrine
4x Concealed Courtyard
4x Eldrazi Temple
2x Shambling Vents
3x Caves of Koilos
2x Ghost Quarter
1x Plain
1x Swamp
3x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Thoughtseize
1x Collective Brutality
1x Anguished Unmaking
3x Path to exile
3x Fatal Push
4x Lingering Souls
1x Sorin, Solemn Visitor
Artifacts
4x Relic of Progenitus
Creatures
4x Reality Smasher
2x Eternal Scourge
4x Thought-Knot Seer
4x Wasteland Strangler
BWC Processors Eldrazi CWB
UBC Emerge EldraziCBU
C Tron Eldrazi C
RBC Meld Eldrazi CBR
GU Tokens Eldrazi UG
Awesome write up. I will test out the hangerbacks for matterreshaper
****
Concealed Courtyard is great, but so is Shambling Vent. Tough call on the right balance. I thought I'd try to do a little math here. My reckoning suggests:
****
Still not too sold on running Eldrazi Displacer in this build, because it automatically becomes the best target for Bolt in our entire deck. But it's amazing when it sticks, though, it's true.
****
I played Oblivion Ring for quite a while and decided that I wanted the instant speed and protection from Decay, Maelstrom Pulse, Qasali Pridemage, etc. But I have definitely found that I couldn't cast Unmaking before, due to either mana availability or life total, so it's a judgment call. Specifically regarding Tron, note that O-Ring is vulnerable to many of their cards, including Oblivion Stone, Karn Liberated, and Nature's Claim out of the side.
On the caveats:
1) If they kill Walker with a Push, that's positive value for us. It doesn't change the amount of power on our board at all and they're down a card. I hope they blow their removal on that and not TKS. As for Stony Silence and Pithing Needle, I am happy if our opponents bring that in against us. Our artifacts are not our primary threats. I mean, we ourselves are siding in Stony Silence from our own board...
2) Blue control decks are both unpopular and even-to-positive matchups since you have Souls and huge threats that you can pace one at a time. Not super happy about running Cavern at all. No synergy with Temple is a legit concern, but Walker is there to do something when you don't have a Temple. If you do have a Temple, hopefully you have something decent to cast.
3) Playing Walker with Mind Stone seems fine - I think the deck would like more than a few 2's, since you don't have Temple in your opener about half of the time. When Temple is there, you're in business so whatever, and when it's not, you need to do something proactive on turn 2, and I can totally see situations where one or the other is better. Mind Stone is a good plan when you're not being pressured (to set up TKS and so forth) and Walker is a good plan when you're on defense. Here's a line that comes up occasionally. You keep a hand with no Temple, play turn 1 Relic or whatever, and your opponent responds with turn 1 Goblin Guide or Nacatl or Swiftspear or whatever. Hangarback Walker saves you at least 2 life by blocking and possibly more if you follow up with any 3 or 4-drop (which also blocks).
Vent is definitely a good card, and it could be right to play some, but lists here that run like 0 or 1 Courtyard seem wrong to me, that's all. Untapped dual lands are really good, especially in games where we're just trying to stall to TKS and Smasher.
I'm not sold on Displacer either, this is for sure experimental. I can easily see it being extremely bad just because we usually don't have time to activate it if we play it on t2 or t3, and playing a 3/3 for 3 that often gets no value is definitely not what I'm trying to do with this deck's best draws.
Unmaking seems too hard to cast and too slow when you're deploying it as anything except planeswalker removal. I'm pretty happy with Disenchant, to be honest. Our creature and removal suite is already pretty good at battling planeswalkers, and I'm not convinced we need a card specifically for them. I'd rather play Celestial Purge if I were in the market for such a spell since honestly all the commonly-played planeswalkers I'm afraid of are black or red except Karn (and your plan versus Karn is to strip it from hand and/or stop Tron from getting assembled).