Hi guys, yesterday I took part in a PPTQ event. Short report of the rounds:
31 people, 5 rounds. In the signature you will find a link to the list.
Round 1: 2-1 against Jund
This matchup is really good. He played really well turn 2 but they struggle a lot jsut to get close to winning. Nevertheless, Jund is a very real deck, and we need to play tight to actually be on the lead.
IN: 2 Wraths
OUT: 2 Collective Brutality
Round 2: 2-1 against BW Superfriends
This deck tries to be a tokens deck, but based on PW, way more than us. They play a lot of sweepers (main and postboard), and even a Cleansing Nova that wrecked all my enchantments game 1. Still, if you wanna get grindy, it is hard to out-grind tokens.
IN: 2 Pithing Needle, 1 Wrath of God + 1 Damnation
Round 3: 1-2 against RG prison/dragons/ponza
Not sure about how to name the deck. Game 1 he caught me under the Blood Moon. I had a plains so I could do things, but then he managed to get me bad. Game 2 was simple superb. Disrupt, assemble tokens, pathpathpath, disenchant moon, attack for 12 in the air. GG. The guy was very impressed. Game 3 turned into a grind fest, which all the tournament ended up watching for fun (as it was the last match to finish). Amazing game full of ups and downs. I got to a critical point where I had Liliana of the Veil and Gideon, ally of zendikar on the table and active. protected by 3 tokens, while they had 1 creature. They topdecked a BBE into Fiery Justice dealing 4 damage to the tokens (killing them) and one to Gideon, who was at 4. Then they attacked with 2 BBE and killed both my PW and leave my board empty. Totally reversed the game there. Had they drawn a land, I would have won the match, easy. I could kill their creatures and their chandra thanks to Bitterblossom, but then I spent 5 turns attacking with my Shambling vent, and drawing lands. Only needed a token generator, but the gods of magic didnt give it to me. A pity to line 6 lands on a row after all the thing happening in the matchup, but, well, ***** happens.
IN: 2 Disenchant
OUT: 2 Legion´s Landing
Round 4: 0-2 against Hollow One
The guy told me that it was gonna be a good matchup for me. I disagreed deeply, and apparently I wasnt too far from the truth. He trampled over my poor tokens. Didnt see any SB in game 2. I made a mistake playing a tapped land when I needed it untapped, and made things worse. I am not sure I could have won by doing what I wanted to, but it would have been closer, for sure. First time playing against Hollow One though, so I took some notes:
- We need to mulligan a bit more aggresively to find GY hate. A good tokens hand is most of the times not enough, because they dont care about our
early disruption.
- Always pay attention to beginning of combat: the phoenixes are a thing.
- Control the big hitters, then their small ones, and lastly their GY (as a rule of thumb, but if you have a clear chance to take on the GY, go for
it).
I will be practicing a bit this MUs, which are unfortunately not common in my LGS.
IN: 3 Extractions, 1 Rest in Peace, 1 Wrath of God, 1 Blessed alliance (next time I will leave the alliace out for the other wrath.
OUT: 2 Liliana of the veil, 3 Thoughtseize, 1 Collective Brutality
Round 5: 2-1 against burn
I think that with the new inclusion of Legion´s Landing and the 3rd Sorin, Solemn Visitor the MU has become much better for me. Game 2 he won on the classical burn outrage against a kind of meh hand I had. The other games felt really good and I was able to gain a ton of life with 1/1 lifelinkers. He never really had a chance, especially when I Iok away his Ensnaring Bridge
IN: 2 Blessed Alliance, 2 Disenchant
OUT: 3 Bitterblossom, 1 Thoughtseize
Finally, 3-2. It could have easily been a 4-1, but variance didnt want to (it felt very bad to lose to this guy, because he was very annoying).
I am very happy with how the deck performed and the one thing I am still thinking about for GP Stockholm are the 2 slots I dedicate in SB for Blessed Alliance. Sure they grant an edge against Death´s shadow, infect, eldrazi, or bogles. The first 2 are already excellent MUs anyway, and the two latter are not so played anymore. Burn feels like we dont really need those slots so badly. I am thiking about boarding something else instead in there. Something that can maybe help us with the new explosive decks appearing in modern: Hardened scales (the 1st and 2nd positions in the swiss were for this deck).
Ideas? I am considering:
- Zealous Persecution, for thopters, GY recurrent creatures, spirits...
- Runed Halo, for valakut and similar combos
- Ghostly Prison could be awesome against all these decks.
Any tips on the SB or in general are appreciated. If you guys have any experience with the new emerging decks in modern, I would also appreciate that.
Also for anyone who might be interested there is a rather large (270+) Facebook group for BW Tokens that I know at least a handful of people from here are active in.
You don't need anything more than Stony for Scales, it's actually more favorable than regular Affinity. I'd recommend at least 1 Halo, just so good against so many decks (including Hollow One). Multiple sweepers are currently really good but you want different ones so as to not get locked out by Meddling Mage. I run 1 copy of each Engineered Explosives, Damnation, and Wrath of God.
What's the name of the Facebook group? I'm always interested in seeking out other opinions. I intended to run tokens yesterday at a tournament, but I didn't feel comfortable missing the fetches i.e. I chickened out. The LGS in Seoul I go to is hyper competitive, so something as minor as a sub optimal land base can be punishing. Went 2-3 with burn, so I suppose it wouldn't have hurt to try tokens. Just mildly nervous given the large amounts of Tron, UW Control, and every other tier 1 deck that graces the top 8 results pages on the internet.
I'm really bugged by the fact that a lot of decklist I see posted here run less, if any spectral procession at all, often replacing it by Start // finish. How/why do you guys do it? Turn 3 Spectral into beat face has won me so many games it's hard to think about a list not running at least three, let alone none at all.
Now I'm not bashing Start // finish or anyone running it. I run 1/2 myself from time to time, but it's always alongside my playset of spectral and I really don't see it replacing it. The finish part is neat, but we're not casting that part until turn 4. Also, the token being vigilance instead of flying really does not click with me. I actually like the redundancy of vigilance, but not having flying almost delegate them to chump blockers. Best part is Start being an instant, but then the comparison to Raise the alarm is inevitable and I believe pretty fair. Do you really want to pay one more mana to have finish in the grave? Is Start // Finish being a potential discard fodder really relevant? Is it not worth it to have the tokens a turn earlier?
I can see the argument of spectral being pretty restrictive in the mana requirement, but we're not splashing any other color (other than black) and I've even seen it being heavily discouraged here. I agree with that. Believe me, I've tried many MANY time to splash Green or Red and while we do get some pretty neat cards from both colors, BW gives us pretty much all we need and is way more consistent). Hell, black is initially a splash for sorin, lingering and our discard package (And Bitterblossom, Liliana of the veil, Fatal push, etc. Deck can actually get pretty 50/50). we're already main white and even our manabase is built so that spectral turn 3 is easily (*Ahem*) achievable.
So is it for the utility lands? because so far Vault of the archangel is pretty much the only nonwhite/colorless land I care about anymore and I don't run more than one. Being able to run multiple Ghost quarter without the drawback of having spectral stuck in our hand is a big plus (It's actually the best argument for Finish over spectral imo), but it's just not good enough against tron and I am not willing to hurt my color production for a 5%/10% boost to a match-up that's already below 30% win rate. It actually has been better against manlands like Mutavault and Inkmoth nexus than it has been against tron...
Oh, and Field of ruing is even less good against tron. I know it technically doesn't hurt our mana production, but on the draw our opponent has time to drop a big guy before we can disrupt the tron lands.
I will try to summarise my main points for/against spectral:
PROS Spectral:
- 3 mana = 3 tokens, great value
- tokens fly
- spectral into sorin is nuts
PROS Start:
- INSTANT SPEED is huuuuuuuge! Board-wipe? ok. EOT, Start. Attack for 4 with my virtue. players really dont expect this. We play all our other tokens at sorcery speed, so this option, includes another thing that opponents need to consider in their turn. This (I repeat) is HUUUUGE!
- 1 more mana for a removal spell that takes on (very close to) ANY creature in modern? Any day of the week. I cant count the number of creatures I have killed with finish.
- No problems with GQ. This allows our game to be soooo much more consistent when running colorless lands in our hand. GQ is a key card in my deck, I consider.
Also, vigilance in the tokens is, quite often, relevant (more than I had expected). I guess echoing truth effects get worse if we diversify our tokens (never had to face this problem, though). I see the power of spectral, dont get me wrong, but since I play Start/Finish I have felt a very significant improvement in the deck. We can talk all day long, but I guess it is a matter of feelings, and probably which shell are you running. More aggresive versions will be favoured by spectral, and more controllish versions by Start.
My list still runs 4x Spectrals , 4x Souls , 1x Secure the Wastes and 3x Midnight Haunting. The latter is the one most likely being swapped out for Start, do to my list running comparably low on creature-removal. But my list is more on the odd side anyway, playing 2 Worship, as well as 4 Tidehollow Sculler mainboard...
Oh and why is noone playing Zealous Persecution. I play it as a one-off to randomly catch Hierarch, Bird, Bob, Steel Overseer, Thalia as well as her Lieutenant...so far I never felt unhappy whenever I cast it and it even won me a couple of games by messing with opponents math.
Oh and why is noone playing Zealous Persecution. I play it as a one-off to randomly catch Hierarch, Bird, Bob, Steel Overseer, Thalia as well as her Lieutenant...so far I never felt unhappy whenever I cast it and it even won me a couple of games by messing with opponents math.
I run 0 to 2 ZP depending on my mood/assessment of the meta, usually one main and one in the side. I really like it against storm, affinity, humans and elves, but those deck are actually pretty rare in my meta. Burn, tron, jund and jeskai control are more of a thing where I live and ZP is not that great against those.
Also, Tidehollow sculler is not a bad card, but it goes a little bit against the "don't turn removal on" gameplan we have. It can still be pretty good against combo.
I have yet to try Worship one day, but bitterblossom just doesn't interact well with it.
-- Spectral procession:
+ Produce three tokens at once for three mana (Best mana to token ratio)
+ Tokens have evasion (flying)
+ Part of the legendary dream play of "T1: Discard/Disruption ;T2: Intangible virtue ;T3: Spectral Procession; T4: Sorin, Solemn Visitor"
- Sorcery speed
- Very mana intensive. WWW mean we can't stray from being mainly white in our manabase and we have to limit our nonwhite sources (Ghost quarters, swamps, Vault of the archangel etc)
Spectral procession is better if you want your creature attacking to matter. It's the quickest way to put lots of tokens on the field at once.
-- Start // finish:
+ Instant speed
+ Not mana restrictive at all. If you get to three mana, you can cast it.
+ The aftermath effect is additionnal removal at a cost we can usually pay (sacrifice a creature)
+ Not totally lost if discarded
- Token don't have evasion (But they have vigilance (Have a secret +))
- Only two tokens
- Is an overcosted Raise the alarm if Finish is not useful in the match-up (AKA Combo, protection black, hexproff, grave hate, etc.)
Start // finish is better if you can go for the long game and the "Finish" part become relevant. Not the best token producer, but it makes up by being pretty versatile.
Both have the + of costing only 3 mana and being 6 CMC, which mean they can dodge Inquisition of kozilek
Also for anyone who might be interested there is a rather large (270+) Facebook group for BW Tokens that I know at least a handful of people from here are active in.
How have the 1x Cast Down and 1x Secure the Wastes felt to you?
I think the other consideration with spectral vs start is collective brutality. Running that as a serious disruption price of your deck, escalate with start and lingering souls isn't as painful. Just cast them from your graveyard after you two for one your opponent.
I am working on a SB guide for my list. I have all the most relevant MUs sorted in columns and the strategy reflected in the table. If I am missing some relevant deck in the modern scene, tip me off please Link:
Currently, draw/play has not been taken into account, as I dont think it really matters that much. I would appreciate commets on that point.
The last column on the right tells how many times a certain card is switched out/in (notice that cards with more copies in the deck will show higher numbers here, but might be taken out in less MUs. I should probably weigh that somehow). I can infer how relevant a certain SB card is, and which cards in my main are weaker to the current meta. I would also appreciate some opinions on that.
Finally, and actually most importantly, let me know what do you think about the strategies for each MUs. Most of them are clear, but, well, criticism is always welcome. I would LOVE TO HAVE SOME FEEDBACK on the strategies before GP Stockholm (this weekend)
Feel free to take the spreadsheet as template for your own decks, but dont expect anything too fancy.
Dude, that is great! thanks a lot. I think I have only played once against this deck. I remember they played a pact in response to my Lili +1, fetched a baloth and put it into play. Op was proud and thought he had taken over the game with that play. I played damping sphere as continuation, and when he tried to pay for the pact, he discovered one of his lands was a dual. 3 lands in total = no mana for pact. GGs. Salt was everywhere
That info on the matchup is incredible, and really detailed! Is there any way in which we can put that in the primer, so people can find it more easily? It's useful for everyone who visits this thread!
I have been thinking about the MU and I got to some conclusions. Let me know what you think:
- Pithing needle on tolaria west seems insane. Turns their best land into their worse. We could also name the snake, ballista, zakama, or EE, for instance. I have seen lists that run Ugin!
- Brutality is also very good I would say. Kills are their enablers AND lets us take a pact from their hand. ALso takes all the additional wraths they bring in post-board. I think is a true nightmare for them. Can even take a spell pierce!!
(note that with these two, we have disabled their main 2 engines. If they draw explosives or the creature they need anyway, then gg)
- Not sure we want so many surgical effects. While they are good combined with discard are good, maybe 3 is too much.
- I agree that disenchant is a bit too narrow. I prefer to rely on discard t1 rather than disenchant. If they play the amulet t1 on the play, disenchant might be too late anyway.
- Damping sphere is good against them. full stop.
I think the strategy I would follow is:
OUT: 3 fatal push, 1 Legions landing. The latter being not too bad, but still worse than the SB cards we are using.
IN: 1 pithing needle, 1 damping sphere, 2 surgical extractions
31 people, 5 rounds. In the signature you will find a link to the list.
Round 1: 2-1 against Jund
This matchup is really good. He played really well turn 2 but they struggle a lot jsut to get close to winning. Nevertheless, Jund is a very real deck, and we need to play tight to actually be on the lead.
IN: 2 Wraths
OUT: 2 Collective Brutality
Round 2: 2-1 against BW Superfriends
This deck tries to be a tokens deck, but based on PW, way more than us. They play a lot of sweepers (main and postboard), and even a Cleansing Nova that wrecked all my enchantments game 1. Still, if you wanna get grindy, it is hard to out-grind tokens.
IN: 2 Pithing Needle, 1 Wrath of God + 1 Damnation
Round 3: 1-2 against RG prison/dragons/ponza
Not sure about how to name the deck. Game 1 he caught me under the Blood Moon. I had a plains so I could do things, but then he managed to get me bad. Game 2 was simple superb. Disrupt, assemble tokens, pathpathpath, disenchant moon, attack for 12 in the air. GG. The guy was very impressed. Game 3 turned into a grind fest, which all the tournament ended up watching for fun (as it was the last match to finish). Amazing game full of ups and downs. I got to a critical point where I had Liliana of the Veil and Gideon, ally of zendikar on the table and active. protected by 3 tokens, while they had 1 creature. They topdecked a BBE into Fiery Justice dealing 4 damage to the tokens (killing them) and one to Gideon, who was at 4. Then they attacked with 2 BBE and killed both my PW and leave my board empty. Totally reversed the game there. Had they drawn a land, I would have won the match, easy. I could kill their creatures and their chandra thanks to Bitterblossom, but then I spent 5 turns attacking with my Shambling vent, and drawing lands. Only needed a token generator, but the gods of magic didnt give it to me. A pity to line 6 lands on a row after all the thing happening in the matchup, but, well, ***** happens.
IN: 2 Disenchant
OUT: 2 Legion´s Landing
Round 4: 0-2 against Hollow One
The guy told me that it was gonna be a good matchup for me. I disagreed deeply, and apparently I wasnt too far from the truth. He trampled over my poor tokens. Didnt see any SB in game 2. I made a mistake playing a tapped land when I needed it untapped, and made things worse. I am not sure I could have won by doing what I wanted to, but it would have been closer, for sure. First time playing against Hollow One though, so I took some notes:
- We need to mulligan a bit more aggresively to find GY hate. A good tokens hand is most of the times not enough, because they dont care about our
early disruption.
- Always pay attention to beginning of combat: the phoenixes are a thing.
- Control the big hitters, then their small ones, and lastly their GY (as a rule of thumb, but if you have a clear chance to take on the GY, go for
it).
I will be practicing a bit this MUs, which are unfortunately not common in my LGS.
IN: 3 Extractions, 1 Rest in Peace, 1 Wrath of God, 1 Blessed alliance (next time I will leave the alliace out for the other wrath.
OUT: 2 Liliana of the veil, 3 Thoughtseize, 1 Collective Brutality
Round 5: 2-1 against burn
I think that with the new inclusion of Legion´s Landing and the 3rd Sorin, Solemn Visitor the MU has become much better for me. Game 2 he won on the classical burn outrage against a kind of meh hand I had. The other games felt really good and I was able to gain a ton of life with 1/1 lifelinkers. He never really had a chance, especially when I Iok away his Ensnaring Bridge
IN: 2 Blessed Alliance, 2 Disenchant
OUT: 3 Bitterblossom, 1 Thoughtseize
Finally, 3-2. It could have easily been a 4-1, but variance didnt want to (it felt very bad to lose to this guy, because he was very annoying).
I am very happy with how the deck performed and the one thing I am still thinking about for GP Stockholm are the 2 slots I dedicate in SB for Blessed Alliance. Sure they grant an edge against Death´s shadow, infect, eldrazi, or bogles. The first 2 are already excellent MUs anyway, and the two latter are not so played anymore. Burn feels like we dont really need those slots so badly. I am thiking about boarding something else instead in there. Something that can maybe help us with the new explosive decks appearing in modern: Hardened scales (the 1st and 2nd positions in the swiss were for this deck).
Ideas? I am considering:
- Zealous Persecution, for thopters, GY recurrent creatures, spirits...
- Runed Halo, for valakut and similar combos
- Ghostly Prison could be awesome against all these decks.
Any tips on the SB or in general are appreciated. If you guys have any experience with the new emerging decks in modern, I would also appreciate that.
THANKS!!!
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
This is my current list which hasn't changed much in the last 3-4mo.
1x Arid Mesa
1x Bloodstained Mire
4x Concealed Courtyard
4x Ghost Quarter
2x Godless Shrine
4x Marsh Flats
2x Plains
4x Shambling Vent
2x Swamp
Planeswalker (6)
1x Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2x Liliana of the Veil
1x Sorin, Lord of Innistrad
2x Sorin, Solemn Visitor
1x Cast Down
2x Fatal Push
4x Path to Exile
1x Secure the Wastes
3x Start // Finish
Sorcery (11)
1x Collective Brutality
2x Inquisition of Kozilek
4x Lingering Souls
4x Thoughtseize
Enchantment (8)
4x Bitterblossom
4x Intangible Virtue
1x Anguished Unmaking
1x Collective Brutality
1x Damnation
1x Engineered Explosives
2x Extirpate
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
2x Nihil Spellbomb
1x Runed Halo
3x Stony Silence
1x Timely Reinforcements
1x Wrath of God
Link to deck @ TappedOut.net
Also for anyone who might be interested there is a rather large (270+) Facebook group for BW Tokens that I know at least a handful of people from here are active in.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/646400015546150/
Now I'm not bashing Start // finish or anyone running it. I run 1/2 myself from time to time, but it's always alongside my playset of spectral and I really don't see it replacing it. The finish part is neat, but we're not casting that part until turn 4. Also, the token being vigilance instead of flying really does not click with me. I actually like the redundancy of vigilance, but not having flying almost delegate them to chump blockers. Best part is Start being an instant, but then the comparison to Raise the alarm is inevitable and I believe pretty fair. Do you really want to pay one more mana to have finish in the grave? Is Start // Finish being a potential discard fodder really relevant? Is it not worth it to have the tokens a turn earlier?
I can see the argument of spectral being pretty restrictive in the mana requirement, but we're not splashing any other color (other than black) and I've even seen it being heavily discouraged here. I agree with that. Believe me, I've tried many MANY time to splash Green or Red and while we do get some pretty neat cards from both colors, BW gives us pretty much all we need and is way more consistent). Hell, black is initially a splash for sorin, lingering and our discard package (And Bitterblossom, Liliana of the veil, Fatal push, etc. Deck can actually get pretty 50/50). we're already main white and even our manabase is built so that spectral turn 3 is easily (*Ahem*) achievable.
So is it for the utility lands? because so far Vault of the archangel is pretty much the only nonwhite/colorless land I care about anymore and I don't run more than one. Being able to run multiple Ghost quarter without the drawback of having spectral stuck in our hand is a big plus (It's actually the best argument for Finish over spectral imo), but it's just not good enough against tron and I am not willing to hurt my color production for a 5%/10% boost to a match-up that's already below 30% win rate. It actually has been better against manlands like Mutavault and Inkmoth nexus than it has been against tron...
Oh, and Field of ruing is even less good against tron. I know it technically doesn't hurt our mana production, but on the draw our opponent has time to drop a big guy before we can disrupt the tron lands.
(W/B)BW Tokens(W/B) | (B/R)Rakdos Burn(B/R) | (U/R)Gift Storm(U/R)
PROS Spectral:
- 3 mana = 3 tokens, great value
- tokens fly
- spectral into sorin is nuts
PROS Start:
- INSTANT SPEED is huuuuuuuge! Board-wipe? ok. EOT, Start. Attack for 4 with my virtue. players really dont expect this. We play all our other tokens at sorcery speed, so this option, includes another thing that opponents need to consider in their turn. This (I repeat) is HUUUUGE!
- 1 more mana for a removal spell that takes on (very close to) ANY creature in modern? Any day of the week. I cant count the number of creatures I have killed with finish.
- No problems with GQ. This allows our game to be soooo much more consistent when running colorless lands in our hand. GQ is a key card in my deck, I consider.
Also, vigilance in the tokens is, quite often, relevant (more than I had expected). I guess echoing truth effects get worse if we diversify our tokens (never had to face this problem, though). I see the power of spectral, dont get me wrong, but since I play Start/Finish I have felt a very significant improvement in the deck. We can talk all day long, but I guess it is a matter of feelings, and probably which shell are you running. More aggresive versions will be favoured by spectral, and more controllish versions by Start.
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
My list still runs 4x Spectrals , 4x Souls , 1x Secure the Wastes and 3x Midnight Haunting. The latter is the one most likely being swapped out for Start, do to my list running comparably low on creature-removal. But my list is more on the odd side anyway, playing 2 Worship, as well as 4 Tidehollow Sculler mainboard...
Oh and why is noone playing Zealous Persecution. I play it as a one-off to randomly catch Hierarch, Bird, Bob, Steel Overseer, Thalia as well as her Lieutenant...so far I never felt unhappy whenever I cast it and it even won me a couple of games by messing with opponents math.
B/W Tokens
Midnight Presence
Jeskai Weirding
EDH:
WG Selvala, Explorer Returned Activated-Ability-Tribal GW
BR Lyzolda, the Blood Witch Aggro-Reanimator RB
WUR Kykar, Wind's Fury Polymorph RUW
WUBRG Karona, False God Voltron Pillowfort GRBUW
Also, Tidehollow sculler is not a bad card, but it goes a little bit against the "don't turn removal on" gameplan we have. It can still be pretty good against combo.
I have yet to try Worship one day, but bitterblossom just doesn't interact well with it.
(W/B)BW Tokens(W/B) | (B/R)Rakdos Burn(B/R) | (U/R)Gift Storm(U/R)
-- Spectral procession:
+ Produce three tokens at once for three mana (Best mana to token ratio)
+ Tokens have evasion (flying)
+ Part of the legendary dream play of "T1: Discard/Disruption ;T2: Intangible virtue ;T3: Spectral Procession; T4: Sorin, Solemn Visitor"
- Sorcery speed
- Very mana intensive. WWW mean we can't stray from being mainly white in our manabase and we have to limit our nonwhite sources (Ghost quarters, swamps, Vault of the archangel etc)
Spectral procession is better if you want your creature attacking to matter. It's the quickest way to put lots of tokens on the field at once.
-- Start // finish:
+ Instant speed
+ Not mana restrictive at all. If you get to three mana, you can cast it.
+ The aftermath effect is additionnal removal at a cost we can usually pay (sacrifice a creature)
+ Not totally lost if discarded
- Token don't have evasion (But they have vigilance (Have a secret +))
- Only two tokens
- Is an overcosted Raise the alarm if Finish is not useful in the match-up (AKA Combo, protection black, hexproff, grave hate, etc.)
Start // finish is better if you can go for the long game and the "Finish" part become relevant. Not the best token producer, but it makes up by being pretty versatile.
Both have the + of costing only 3 mana and being 6 CMC, which mean they can dodge Inquisition of kozilek
(W/B)BW Tokens(W/B) | (B/R)Rakdos Burn(B/R) | (U/R)Gift Storm(U/R)
I do want to try a single copy of Start // Finish.
Frenzy-Affinity-Ghost Quarter-Rock-Tokens- RGWPhyrexian Zoo- WVial KnightsStandard:
BW Knights(Rotated)Pioneer: RW Knights - BW Rally Zombies - UW Heroes
Commander:WUG
Jenara, Asura of War- WGSigarda, Host of HeronsCasualties of economicsLegacy: Good-night, sweet prince. Mono-R Burn
How have the 1x Cast Down and 1x Secure the Wastes felt to you?
BWTokens
GCollected Stompany
BWGUSeance Insanity
URUR Bloo
4 Marsh Flats
4 Windswept Heath
3 Godless Shrine
4 Concealed Courtyard
1 Shambling Vent
4 Ghost Quarter
3 Plains
1 Swamp
Spells (36):
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
3 Thoughtseize
4 Path to Exile
2 Fatal Push
2 Auriok Champion
3 Bitterblossom
1 Collective Brutality
4 Intangible Virtue
4 Lingering Souls
4 History of Benalia
1 Start // Finish
2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar
2 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
1 Pithing Needle
1 Collective Brutality
2 Damping Sphere
1 Blessed Alliance
2 Sundering Growth
3 Stony Silence
2 Rest In Peace
1 Crucible of Worlds
1 Day of Judgment
1 Wrath of God
I'm trying History of Benalia and it's working great. It can deal a lot of damage to the opponent. Also, with no Spectral Procession I can run the full playset of Ghost Quarter, and Crucible of Worlds in the sideboard.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D2_R_PZ5mumJMGYIpTEozUFFJ99DlhRDpWg8Z-rj0Gk/edit?usp=sharing (I hope it works)
Currently, draw/play has not been taken into account, as I dont think it really matters that much. I would appreciate commets on that point.
The last column on the right tells how many times a certain card is switched out/in (notice that cards with more copies in the deck will show higher numbers here, but might be taken out in less MUs. I should probably weigh that somehow). I can infer how relevant a certain SB card is, and which cards in my main are weaker to the current meta. I would also appreciate some opinions on that.
Finally, and actually most importantly, let me know what do you think about the strategies for each MUs. Most of them are clear, but, well, criticism is always welcome. I would LOVE TO HAVE SOME FEEDBACK on the strategies before GP Stockholm (this weekend)
Feel free to take the spreadsheet as template for your own decks, but dont expect anything too fancy.
Thanks a lot guys!
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic
- Pithing needle on tolaria west seems insane. Turns their best land into their worse. We could also name the snake, ballista, zakama, or EE, for instance. I have seen lists that run Ugin!
- Brutality is also very good I would say. Kills are their enablers AND lets us take a pact from their hand. ALso takes all the additional wraths they bring in post-board. I think is a true nightmare for them. Can even take a spell pierce!!
(note that with these two, we have disabled their main 2 engines. If they draw explosives or the creature they need anyway, then gg)
- Not sure we want so many surgical effects. While they are good combined with discard are good, maybe 3 is too much.
- I agree that disenchant is a bit too narrow. I prefer to rely on discard t1 rather than disenchant. If they play the amulet t1 on the play, disenchant might be too late anyway.
- Damping sphere is good against them. full stop.
I think the strategy I would follow is:
OUT: 3 fatal push, 1 Legions landing. The latter being not too bad, but still worse than the SB cards we are using.
IN: 1 pithing needle, 1 damping sphere, 2 surgical extractions
BW BW Tokens
RG Dredgeplendid Reclamation
RW Boros Burn
GB Elves
RB Dark Goblins
WU Azorius' Relic