Re: Teeg and Turns, I’ve been playing around with Turns lately. UW Turns will have Path and possibly Detention Sphere in the 75; UB versions will run Push and Brutality; UR Turns plays Bolt and often Pyroclasm; As Foretold versions tend to play a Living End, regardless of color splashes or lack thereof. Even mono-blue Turns decks will usually have access to cards like Snapback, Unsubstantiate, Echoing Truth, or Vapor Snag. Thing in the Ice is another potential out to Teeg, and one that still sees a fair amount of play despite losing some slots to JtMS.
All that said, Teeg is still great against Turns! Arguably, only Thalia GoT does more, as least so far as hatebears go. Still, don’t expect most Turns players to concede to Teeg on the spot.
I’m still trucking along with traditional Abzan. Online results are holding strong. Picked up another 3-0 to bring my record to 10-1 in paper events, taking down Boros Burn (with a budget landbase), GW Evolution, and Amulet Titan (had to take a risky line to get the G3 win when the clock ran out that would be suboptimal in most situations—ulted LoTV, split his lands in half and put one Amulet in each pile so I could grow the Goyf, leaving me vulnerable to topdecks. It paid off).
I tried the Traverse setup a couple of times and decided it wasn’t for me, but that’s all good: it’s healthy for the Abzan archetype as a whole to have portions of the community playing both Traverse and traditional builds respectively. Keep grinding em out!
Ponza is very fine indeed. In my mind it is not a good deck in the first place, but who am I to judge. I often won by playing a turn 2 Goyf and attacking until they are dead. It happens.
In theory the best start they can have against us is probably turn 1 Utopia Sprawl into turn 2 BM or LD. They would need either 2 BM or 2 LD to also blank our discard spells. And Sprawls is self explanatory since it doesn't die to Bolt/Push like Bird or Arbor Elf do. So the key to their success is dodge/blank a turn 1 Bolt/Push and a turn 1 discard spell, then they are in a decent position. But most of the time, when they don't manage to get us in turns 1-3, we are in a decent position (especially due to the fact that the deck topdecks so horribly)
apologies if I may be asking something that has already been discussed and may seem obvious to the ones who've played the deck (in this case I am interested in building it as I very much like the idea of the deck) but I have been unable to really understand.
My first question is regarding the number of lands. Many of the cards this deck plays are low mana cost but one of my favorites is Siege Rhino which is at 4 cmc. Is 19-20 lands enough to be able to consistently cast Rhino? I imagine you avoid using Traverse for a land whenever possible(?) This question is also relevant for when the plan is to traverse for a creature and be able to cast it in the same turn since it adds 1 to the cmc.
Secondly, I am also curious as to the number of Traverse in the deck. Since it is the namesake card of one of the most prominent builds for Abzan, what is the reason to not play 4?
Final question: Ishkanah, Grafwidow not worth playing? (also in my mind regarding this creature is question #1)
If we talk about consistantly casting Rhino on turn 4, we would need to assume we consistantly want to hit our 4th landdrop on turn 4. Technically you would need 25 lands to do so (according to Frank Karstens article). However, normally a midrange deck running about 2 4 drops is fine running 23-24 lands. With 19-20 lands in our deck, 3 traverse (which can be considered as "lands") as well as 4 Baubles (about 4 cantrips subsitute for 1 land according to Patrick Chapin) we are set up fine to cast Rhino. In this build it is also not needed to cast Rhino on turn 4. Its fine if it happens on turn 5+ also. So this additionally helps.
Like Brightmist said, the goal of this build is not to be too reliant on Traverse and delirium. 3 copies is therefore perfect since it generally means, you want to see on average 1 copy per game, which is perfectly fine. And also, don't be afraid to cast traverse to get a basic! Many opening hands require that, as one landers with a traverse can be a good keep. You have to use traverse to find a land in this spot though.
As for Ishkanah, she is cute and I loved her in Jund as a competition to Abzan's Souls, but here I would not run a 5 drop, its just to expensive.
I am currently trying to figure out how to best implement the card choices for the traverse abzan build into the primer. Is it too confusing if I mark for certain overlapping cards (cards which are both run in normal Abzan and Abzan Traverse) with 2 suggestions for how many copies you should run and label which one is which?
One half of our main secondary fetchlands for the deck. Almost as good as Catacombs as it can fetch all of our Shock lands as well as our basic swamps, it can't fetch up our basic forests though. Still this is the second best fetchland available to us, since requirements for black are generally higher than those of green. Play the full 4 copies, since we do run Push and need more black than ever.
This would of course only affect the overlapping cards, cards like Bauble can be dealt with seperately, and simply be marked as being relevant for the traverse build only.
Hey all, me again
I have been really struggling with playing Abzan recently, with it just feeling too clunky in the current meta. LotV and Souls feel... Not great right now, and the deck lacks any capacity for being broken, meaning it can get run over despite packing disruption. I'm wondering about playing BG RockDrazi instead, as the list has been floating around for a while and I think I'd be able to figure my way around the deck pretty quickly. Here's the list I've theorycrafted:
For Traverse lists, thoughts on Remorseful Cleric in the SB? Or are we better off just running a second Spellbomb to avoid the card disadvantage even though we can't Traverse it? I'm not crazy on Bog taking up a slot in my 15 even though it's traversable.
Remorseful cleric is interesting, it didn't exist a few weeks ago so never tested it, could very well take bojuka's slot (make sure you play 20 lands md then). Im also currently leaning towards 2 spellbombs and 1 surgical instead of 2 Surgical/1 spellbomb.
Cleric as a traverse target has the upside of being a possible instant speed GY hate, but also comes down the soonest on turn 3 (if we traverse for it) which would also take up the whole turn (like Bog would more or less do if you play it as a tapped land for the turn). Bog has the advantage of granting interaction on turn 1 possibly, whereas Cleric only grants that on turn 2. Overall, when we talk about Traversing, Cleric would make more sense as its also a threat and delirium is unlikely on turn 2, but Bog can have some applications when you have it on turn 1 naturally. Not sure how relevant that is though.
Would it be a bad idea to cut one Bauble for an extra land? Am figuring out how to achieve getting to a 20 land build without touching the 3 Pushes, I personally really want them. Could also cut the CB or one Decay, but am not sure about that either.
I would definately not go below 4 baubles, the card is just exactly what the deck needs
I endend up cutting Brutality for the 20th land, haven't missed it so far and I rather have 3 pushes in.
Anafenza has been underperforming for me actually, gonna test something else in that slot (thinking of Thalia, heretic cathar, just as a general card that I like, but maybe its not a good fit)
The point of Thrun for me has never been the grindy games, that's just an upside. He's there against control and we don't have much else against that, not fond of cutting him.
I do however wish there was an extra card for grindy matchups somewhere, Sigarda is great when it lands. Gonti is also good (I used to run him when I played BG rock to help with eldra tron matchups).
Another card that is interesting is Glissa, the traitor. Deathtouch + first strike completely halts attacks, and with 4 baubles and a lot of removals you'll get a draw or 2 out of her. Haven't resorted to her yet due to 2 factors; One is that our creatures matchup isen't bad as it is. The other is that the double green cost is really troublesome, that's actually the main difficulty for me.
Some other random cards to consider: Doran, the siege tower (5/5 and pumps goyf, in place of anafenza for example). Raven's crime (can be milled and will be good against control, but we do not run many lands). Phyrexian revoker (lots of uses). Knight of the reliquary (big creature with good ability, but grave reliant).
Another card that is interesting is Glissa, the traitor. Deathtouch + first strike completely halts attacks, and with 4 baubles and a lot of removals you'll get a draw or 2 out of her. Haven't resorted to her yet due to 2 factors; One is that our creatures matchup isen't bad as it is. The other is that the double green cost is really troublesome, that's actually the main difficulty for me.
Glissa was a two-of for many months in my Rock. The mana was easily manageable there and if nothing else, she could be a blast. I also ran an Executioner's Capsule main and another side, it could be very entertaining. The comb did win FNM games but it isn't probably good enough for bigger stages. The capsule helped my build pump Tarmogoyf as it was my only main-deck artifact and Lightning Bolt was at a seemingly all-time low during those Eldrazi-infested times so Glissa was a little extra durable. Recurring Capsules was much more fun than recurring Baubles would be.
I played a Traverse Rock once with one copy of Glissa, but only a few games so I don't have much data. Folks also seem to be playing decks which prominently feature Bolt again from what little I have seen.
Engineered Explosives is a much better card in Junk than it is in Rock and that's another card Glissa can abuse.
I would definately not go below 4 baubles, the card is just exactly what the deck needs
I endend up cutting Brutality for the 20th land, haven't missed it so far and I rather have 3 pushes in.
Anafenza has been underperforming for me actually, gonna test something else in that slot (thinking of Thalia, heretic cathar, just as a general card that I like, but maybe its not a good fit)
The point of Thrun for me has never been the grindy games, that's just an upside. He's there against control and we don't have much else against that, not fond of cutting him.
I do however wish there was an extra card for grindy matchups somewhere, Sigarda is great when it lands. Gonti is also good (I used to run him when I played BG rock to help with eldra tron matchups).
Another card that is interesting is Glissa, the traitor. Deathtouch + first strike completely halts attacks, and with 4 baubles and a lot of removals you'll get a draw or 2 out of her. Haven't resorted to her yet due to 2 factors; One is that our creatures matchup isen't bad as it is. The other is that the double green cost is really troublesome, that's actually the main difficulty for me.
Some other random cards to consider: Doran, the siege tower (5/5 and pumps goyf, in place of anafenza for example). Raven's crime (can be milled and will be good against control, but we do not run many lands). Phyrexian revoker (lots of uses). Knight of the reliquary (big creature with good ability, but grave reliant).
Gonna test the cleric as well
Cheers
great insight as usual. thank you.
ive been testing eternal witness as a 1off in the sideboard instead of the 4th lingering souls in the sideboard. I had games that lost due to not able to traverse for silver bullet because we already used them.
how's phyrexian revoker and knight of reliquary working for you? thalia heretic cathar seems good in aggressive and big mana decks. it might fit but its too slow for big mana decks.
I thought 19 lands was good. 20 lands I feel like im flooding out more often.
I would definately not go below 4 baubles, the card is just exactly what the deck needs
I endend up cutting Brutality for the 20th land, haven't missed it so far and I rather have 3 pushes in.
Anafenza has been underperforming for me actually, gonna test something else in that slot (thinking of Thalia, heretic cathar, just as a general card that I like, but maybe its not a good fit)
The point of Thrun for me has never been the grindy games, that's just an upside. He's there against control and we don't have much else against that, not fond of cutting him.
I do however wish there was an extra card for grindy matchups somewhere, Sigarda is great when it lands. Gonti is also good (I used to run him when I played BG rock to help with eldra tron matchups).
Another card that is interesting is Glissa, the traitor. Deathtouch + first strike completely halts attacks, and with 4 baubles and a lot of removals you'll get a draw or 2 out of her. Haven't resorted to her yet due to 2 factors; One is that our creatures matchup isen't bad as it is. The other is that the double green cost is really troublesome, that's actually the main difficulty for me.
Some other random cards to consider: Doran, the siege tower (5/5 and pumps goyf, in place of anafenza for example). Raven's crime (can be milled and will be good against control, but we do not run many lands). Phyrexian revoker (lots of uses). Knight of the reliquary (big creature with good ability, but grave reliant).
Gonna test the cleric as well
Cheers
Yeah I figured Bauble is needed as a 4-of. I would hate making delirium even less reliable than it actually is already.
CB was my second choice to cut, but I am not sure if Rhino is enough vs. Burn. But I guess you gotta make sacrifices. What I am still debating though, is that with the cut of CB we want to increase our resiliancy against FoR from Control decks. But by cutting CB we are weakening our Control matchup a bit. Overall I am not sure that exchange nets a positive increase for the matchup. CB is not the best discard spell against them, but I am always quite keen on it in the board at least. Theoretically Thrun in the board helps against Control here, but the fact that many lists now run Terminus and Settle to Wreckage makes Thrun a lot less reliable I think. Also just playing him and having 2 mana up to regenerate him is already tough with 19-20 lands only.
Rhino is enough against burn imo. Burn is not a bad matchup, just keep hands with early removal and eventual access to rhino. You usually drop pretty low but end up winning, its also hard for them to win on the draw.
Cutting CB weakens the control matchup and some others for sure, but as you said, you have to make sacrifices. 19 lands is fine, but 20 is ideal I think (considering we have ghost quarter and plains md which are bad for the manabase). It's up to you, I feel fine right now with cutting the CB, but you can cut the Anafenza or push for example. I like having 3 pushes though.
Eternal witness is pretty good with all our milling, but I dont wish to make the deck so grave reliant, that's why I dont use her.
UW control can answer Thrun, but it's still the best tutorable option I can think of for the matchup (along with gaddock) so Im not fond of cutting him. Thrun is also very good against UWx builds and doubles as a decent 4 drop against midrange.
You can probably open a slot on the sb by cutting 1 surgical/spellbomb for a midrange grindy card. 1 cleric + 2 surgical/spellbomb + md ooze/anafenza should be enough grave hate.
Grisly salvage can be cut (I side it out against aggressive decks for example). Still, its a good card against midrange and control (especially if you run 4 souls), the most reliable way we have to reach delirium, and an extra way to find your relevant creatures against tron or some combos, it definitely has its merits but I can see it being cut instead of the brutality.
Casting a turn 4 rhino against burn may not seem like much, but in my experience its enough (we do have discards, removals and early blockers after all). I lose very little to burn so I'm not overly concerned with the matchup.
I played a few games with two copies of Eternal Witness in a Ghost-Quarter Rock largely copied from the Primer. Emphasis on "Few". It never felt good and it seemed to languish in hand waiting for a use. The best use I got out of one was to retrieve a Fatal Push and use it. Otherwise, it was just a chump blocker that replaced itself with a card to cast next turn.
All that said, Teeg is still great against Turns! Arguably, only Thalia GoT does more, as least so far as hatebears go. Still, don’t expect most Turns players to concede to Teeg on the spot.
I’m still trucking along with traditional Abzan. Online results are holding strong. Picked up another 3-0 to bring my record to 10-1 in paper events, taking down Boros Burn (with a budget landbase), GW Evolution, and Amulet Titan (had to take a risky line to get the G3 win when the clock ran out that would be suboptimal in most situations—ulted LoTV, split his lands in half and put one Amulet in each pile so I could grow the Goyf, leaving me vulnerable to topdecks. It paid off).
I tried the Traverse setup a couple of times and decided it wasn’t for me, but that’s all good: it’s healthy for the Abzan archetype as a whole to have portions of the community playing both Traverse and traditional builds respectively. Keep grinding em out!
YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
In theory the best start they can have against us is probably turn 1 Utopia Sprawl into turn 2 BM or LD. They would need either 2 BM or 2 LD to also blank our discard spells. And Sprawls is self explanatory since it doesn't die to Bolt/Push like Bird or Arbor Elf do. So the key to their success is dodge/blank a turn 1 Bolt/Push and a turn 1 discard spell, then they are in a decent position. But most of the time, when they don't manage to get us in turns 1-3, we are in a decent position (especially due to the fact that the deck topdecks so horribly)
If we talk about consistantly casting Rhino on turn 4, we would need to assume we consistantly want to hit our 4th landdrop on turn 4. Technically you would need 25 lands to do so (according to Frank Karstens article). However, normally a midrange deck running about 2 4 drops is fine running 23-24 lands. With 19-20 lands in our deck, 3 traverse (which can be considered as "lands") as well as 4 Baubles (about 4 cantrips subsitute for 1 land according to Patrick Chapin) we are set up fine to cast Rhino. In this build it is also not needed to cast Rhino on turn 4. Its fine if it happens on turn 5+ also. So this additionally helps.
Like Brightmist said, the goal of this build is not to be too reliant on Traverse and delirium. 3 copies is therefore perfect since it generally means, you want to see on average 1 copy per game, which is perfectly fine. And also, don't be afraid to cast traverse to get a basic! Many opening hands require that, as one landers with a traverse can be a good keep. You have to use traverse to find a land in this spot though.
As for Ishkanah, she is cute and I loved her in Jund as a competition to Abzan's Souls, but here I would not run a 5 drop, its just to expensive.
One half of our main secondary fetchlands for the deck. Almost as good as Catacombs as it can fetch all of our Shock lands as well as our basic swamps, it can't fetch up our basic forests though. Still this is the second best fetchland available to us, since requirements for black are generally higher than those of green. Play the full 4 copies, since we do run Push and need more black than ever.
This would of course only affect the overlapping cards, cards like Bauble can be dealt with seperately, and simply be marked as being relevant for the traverse build only.
YouTube Channel, with deck techs, gameplay, analysis, spoiler reviews, and more!
I have been really struggling with playing Abzan recently, with it just feeling too clunky in the current meta. LotV and Souls feel... Not great right now, and the deck lacks any capacity for being broken, meaning it can get run over despite packing disruption. I'm wondering about playing BG RockDrazi instead, as the list has been floating around for a while and I think I'd be able to figure my way around the deck pretty quickly. Here's the list I've theorycrafted:
4x Verdant Catacombs
3x Blooming Marsh
2x Overgrown Tomb
1x Swamp
1x Forest
1x Treetop Village
4x Llanowar Wastes
4x Eldrazi Temple
2x Mutavault
1x Cavern of Souls
Creatures: 20
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Tarmogoyf
2x Grim Flayer
2x Scavenging Ooze
4x Thought-Knot Seer
4x Reality Smasher
1x Liliana, the Last Hope
Spells: 16
4x Fatal Push
4x Inquisition of Kozilek
2x Thoughtseize
1x Cast Down
2x Abrupt Decay
1x Golgari Charm
2x Maelstrom Pulse
1x Golgari Charm
1x Wheel of Sun and Moon
1x Maelstrom Pulse
1x Thrun, the Last Troll
1x Languish
1x Damnation
2x Collective Brutality
2x Nihil Spellbomb
2x Damping Sphere
3x Fulminator Mage
Do people think this will run better in a meta dominated by Pyro, Affinity and Tron?
I endend up cutting Brutality for the 20th land, haven't missed it so far and I rather have 3 pushes in.
Anafenza has been underperforming for me actually, gonna test something else in that slot (thinking of Thalia, heretic cathar, just as a general card that I like, but maybe its not a good fit)
The point of Thrun for me has never been the grindy games, that's just an upside. He's there against control and we don't have much else against that, not fond of cutting him.
I do however wish there was an extra card for grindy matchups somewhere, Sigarda is great when it lands. Gonti is also good (I used to run him when I played BG rock to help with eldra tron matchups).
Another card that is interesting is Glissa, the traitor. Deathtouch + first strike completely halts attacks, and with 4 baubles and a lot of removals you'll get a draw or 2 out of her. Haven't resorted to her yet due to 2 factors; One is that our creatures matchup isen't bad as it is. The other is that the double green cost is really troublesome, that's actually the main difficulty for me.
Some other random cards to consider: Doran, the siege tower (5/5 and pumps goyf, in place of anafenza for example). Raven's crime (can be milled and will be good against control, but we do not run many lands). Phyrexian revoker (lots of uses). Knight of the reliquary (big creature with good ability, but grave reliant).
Gonna test the cleric as well
Cheers
Glissa was a two-of for many months in my Rock. The mana was easily manageable there and if nothing else, she could be a blast. I also ran an Executioner's Capsule main and another side, it could be very entertaining. The comb did win FNM games but it isn't probably good enough for bigger stages. The capsule helped my build pump Tarmogoyf as it was my only main-deck artifact and Lightning Bolt was at a seemingly all-time low during those Eldrazi-infested times so Glissa was a little extra durable. Recurring Capsules was much more fun than recurring Baubles would be.
I played a Traverse Rock once with one copy of Glissa, but only a few games so I don't have much data. Folks also seem to be playing decks which prominently feature Bolt again from what little I have seen.
Engineered Explosives is a much better card in Junk than it is in Rock and that's another card Glissa can abuse.
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
great insight as usual. thank you.
ive been testing eternal witness as a 1off in the sideboard instead of the 4th lingering souls in the sideboard. I had games that lost due to not able to traverse for silver bullet because we already used them.
how's phyrexian revoker and knight of reliquary working for you? thalia heretic cathar seems good in aggressive and big mana decks. it might fit but its too slow for big mana decks.
I thought 19 lands was good. 20 lands I feel like im flooding out more often.
Yeah I figured Bauble is needed as a 4-of. I would hate making delirium even less reliable than it actually is already.
CB was my second choice to cut, but I am not sure if Rhino is enough vs. Burn. But I guess you gotta make sacrifices. What I am still debating though, is that with the cut of CB we want to increase our resiliancy against FoR from Control decks. But by cutting CB we are weakening our Control matchup a bit. Overall I am not sure that exchange nets a positive increase for the matchup. CB is not the best discard spell against them, but I am always quite keen on it in the board at least. Theoretically Thrun in the board helps against Control here, but the fact that many lists now run Terminus and Settle to Wreckage makes Thrun a lot less reliable I think. Also just playing him and having 2 mana up to regenerate him is already tough with 19-20 lands only.
Cutting CB weakens the control matchup and some others for sure, but as you said, you have to make sacrifices. 19 lands is fine, but 20 is ideal I think (considering we have ghost quarter and plains md which are bad for the manabase). It's up to you, I feel fine right now with cutting the CB, but you can cut the Anafenza or push for example. I like having 3 pushes though.
Eternal witness is pretty good with all our milling, but I dont wish to make the deck so grave reliant, that's why I dont use her.
UW control can answer Thrun, but it's still the best tutorable option I can think of for the matchup (along with gaddock) so Im not fond of cutting him. Thrun is also very good against UWx builds and doubles as a decent 4 drop against midrange.
You can probably open a slot on the sb by cutting 1 surgical/spellbomb for a midrange grindy card. 1 cleric + 2 surgical/spellbomb + md ooze/anafenza should be enough grave hate.
Casting a turn 4 rhino against burn may not seem like much, but in my experience its enough (we do have discards, removals and early blockers after all). I lose very little to burn so I'm not overly concerned with the matchup.
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