Hello all!
I've been interested in this archetype for a while and I'm finally going to build into it, could someone refer me to a good stock list that I could go off of?
Thanks in advance!
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Catch me playing control in every format I can!
Modern: UW, Jeskai, Grixis, Blue moon, Esper, Sultai, UB, UWish
Legacy: Miracles
Hello all!
I've been interested in this archetype for a while and I'm finally going to build into it, could someone refer me to a good stock list that I could go off of?
Thanks in advance!
Scroll up a few posts ... or a page ... or a couple of pages. There's been a lot of good conversation here, and there isn't one "stock list" that's "right." Take a gander, give it some thought, and for the flex slots, run what you're comfortable with based on your meta.
Yeah, a lot of our lists have went to mono blue, but not too far back you'll see my previous list with the white splash, and if you look here you'll see Daniel Wong's UB variant..
Generally all of them share the 9-10 extra turn effects, 6-7 mine effects, and 12-14 pieces of interaction as a general rule of thumb.
Hope this helps some!
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I have been away from game for about 2 years now. I was playing the original mono blue list before the unbanning of Jace. I was wondering what the best way to build mono blue turns is now. It seems like there are so many new resources and I have no idea where to begin.
I would like to play mono-blue so only help with mono-blue please :D.
I would also like to keep the list fairly streamlined, so any suggestions on the most optimal mono-blue list around!
I have been away from game for about 2 years now. I was playing the original mono blue list before the unbanning of Jace. I was wondering what the best way to build mono blue turns is now. It seems like there are so many new resources and I have no idea where to begin.
I would like to play mono-blue so only help with mono-blue please :D.
I would also like to keep the list fairly streamlined, so any suggestions on the most optimal mono-blue list around!
Thanks!
Welcome back to the game (what is it about Ravnica blocks bringing people back? LOL)
My first tip: read the three posts before yours. The further back you read, the more you'll learn. There's been some great discussion that you'd do well to take in. Also, this being Modern, with an enormous card pool and a wide-open meta, there is no "optimal" build. A lot of us like this deck concept because there are a so many ways to reach the endgame.
I have read back and definitely helped a lot but there is still a lot of confusion for me.
The things I am curious about:
Creature base: Should I run thing in the ice or a mixture of snaps and baby jace mainboard?
Mission briefing: This new card looks awesome has anyone had any testing of it? Can it replace snapcaster mage and allow me to run thing mainboard? Or do I run both mission briefing and snapcaster?
I am confused about how many jace to run. I am thinking 1-2 but leaning more towards 2 but not sure if that is correct?
I used to play only 1 howling mine and 4 dictates, but now thinking about running 4x dictate, 1x search for azcanta and 1-2 jace and no mines. Is that correct?
Also, opt/serum visions and remand/ How do they fit into the deck now?
And finally, what is the best way to set up land base now?
The old Mono Blue list is still fine, simply put 2 JTMS in, with 2 Snaps, and 10 Warps. Not much if anything changed, but a White or Black splash for removal is still fine.
The core of Turn 3 Dictate, Turn 4 Cryptic, Turn 5 Combo, remains the same as far as I have seen.
Hey Part the Waterveil! If I may share my insight;
In regards to creature base, snapcaster is still an all star in this deck but I have moved away from him and am currently running Mission Briefing instead. If you are interested in mono blue, the casting cost isn't really difficult as double blue is easy with 18 islands and it's ability to also mill irrelevant cards has been super useful. I'm not really a fan of baby Jace as it's plus once flipped doesn't really do anything relevant and it dies to all forms of removal in the format.
HOWEVER, thing in the ice I would argue is the way to go. I have been playing with 3 mainboard for the past couple weeks since Ravnica was released and it makes the deck incredibly consistent. With 3 Thing in the Ice, 2 Part the Waterveil and Jace - that makes a total of 6 win conditions that easily fit into the deck without negatively affecting the combo. I also run 4 serum vision and 2 opt so it has been extremely easy to flip Thing within 1-2 extra turns and then win. The only downside is that it makes creature removal good against the deck in a way that normally they would side out after game one. I kind of have fixed that through using gigadrowse and exhaustion as a way to tap their lands before playing thing and it has worked.
With the whole howling mine/dictate part - I don't really think there is a definitive. I tried search for a while and was convinced it was the best thing but I think I was lying to myself. You almost never want it to flip as it just becomes a blue land (since most of the time you aren't really going to loot with it and cast an extra turn spell in one turn as it requires too much mana)
Since assassin's trophy is now a thing, I have just went back to 4 dictate 3 howling mine since I haven't been seeing as much targeted artifact removal. Actually with Knight of Autumn being thrown into a lot of GWx decks lately, I could actually see myself cutting a Dictate in place of something like Ancestral Vision again..
Hope this helped.. sorry for the length lol just super tired after a week of school and in the mood to talk magic haha
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Hey Part the Waterveil! If I may share my insight;
In regards to creature base, snapcaster is still an all star in this deck but I have moved away from him and am currently running Mission Briefing instead. If you are interested in mono blue, the casting cost isn't really difficult as double blue is easy with 18 islands and it's ability to also mill irrelevant cards has been super useful. I'm not really a fan of baby Jace as it's plus once flipped doesn't really do anything relevant and it dies to all forms of removal in the format.
HOWEVER, thing in the ice I would argue is the way to go. I have been playing with 3 mainboard for the past couple weeks since Ravnica was released and it makes the deck incredibly consistent. With 3 Thing in the Ice, 2 Part the Waterveil and Jace - that makes a total of 6 win conditions that easily fit into the deck without negatively affecting the combo. I also run 4 serum vision and 2 opt so it has been extremely easy to flip Thing within 1-2 extra turns and then win. The only downside is that it makes creature removal good against the deck in a way that normally they would side out after game one. I kind of have fixed that through using gigadrowse and exhaustion as a way to tap their lands before playing thing and it has worked.
With the whole howling mine/dictate part - I don't really think there is a definitive. I tried search for a while and was convinced it was the best thing but I think I was lying to myself. You almost never want it to flip as it just becomes a blue land (since most of the time you aren't really going to loot with it and cast an extra turn spell in one turn as it requires too much mana)
Since assassin's trophy is now a thing, I have just went back to 4 dictate 3 howling mine since I haven't been seeing as much targeted artifact removal. Actually with Knight of Autumn being thrown into a lot of GWx decks lately, I could actually see myself cutting a Dictate in place of something like Ancestral Vision again..
Hope this helped.. sorry for the length lol just super tired after a week of school and in the mood to talk magic haha
Hey man! That is awesome thanks for the insightful reply that has definitely helped. I am going to cut my snap and jace for 2-3x thing in the ice. I run 11 time warp effects. Did you cut one of those to run 3x thing in the ice? Also, do you run remand in the 2 drop spot?
Hey! yeah, I currently run 4 Time Warp, 3 Temporal Mastery, 2 Part the Waterveil
I think if you are going to play Thing in the Ice, you need to play it as if it is a piece to the combo itself as in not run it out on turn 2 unless you are playing against a creature based deck that lacks a lot of removal..
With one in hand it is really easy to cast it and an extra turn effect all within the same turn.. unlike decks like blue moon that have to cast it so they can cantrip the next couple of turns to flip it, we can chain things together a lot better
Also, yeah I run 2 remand, 3 gigadrowse but lately I have actually contemplated running mainboard negate or mana leak.. I haven't really had too much time to playltest them but my reasoning is that a lot of the format is extremely cheap so remand isn't as useful against decks like mardu and even the different control decks
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Hi everyone ! I played a FNM two weeks ago and I went 3-1 and got 3rd place. I changed my last Howling Mine for a Mission Briefing as I really hate to drop a T2 Howling Mine on the board right now in my LGS metagame. Here's the new list :
Most of the games were really not pro-active and I won twice milling myself out, using my Cryptic to bounce my Dictates and end the game with only Nexus of Fate in the library. This set up works wonderful with Azcanta and I am considering going to 2 Nexus of Fate for more efficiency.
In my case, Azcanta gets transformed as soon as possible and it is in itself a Time Warp because we got a bonus land and when the game is closing, it helps finding Jace or another Time Walk effect to continue. It has been really wonderful and helpful.
Next thing to figure out is about the sideboard, I'm quite happy with it but I don't know if it could be any better
Daniel Wong doing great at GP Atlanta, 7-1 after day one I believe with a UR variant, was on camera at around 2:54:00 during day 1 coverage: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/331011234
Daniel Wong doing great at GP Atlanta, 7-1 after day one I believe with a UR variant, was on camera at around 2:54:00 during day 1 coverage: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/331011234
Bolt snap bolt doing a lot of work against mardu pyro. That spicy cracking drake tech doesn't seem to be working well in actual games though
Daniel Wong doing great at GP Atlanta, 7-1 after day one I believe with a UR variant, was on camera at around 2:54:00 during day 1 coverage: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/331011234
Bolt snap bolt doing a lot of work against mardu pyro. That spicy cracking drake tech doesn't seem to be working well in actual games though
Wow, great ongoing conversation! I was going to multi-quote, but it would be a mess.
@timewalkinonsunshine (love the name!) Congrats on the solid finish, and for having the guts to take this deck to a GP. Looking forward to seeing your report & tech, especially your thoughts on splashing R and maindeck Commandeer.
@zcowan, Part the Waterveil, & spigushe, Great continued discussion on mono-U. I'm still on that plan, too. Please see my thoughts below.
Thing in the Ice -- zcowan is right, it's amazing. Props to whoever suggested it on this forum a few months ago. The most important point on this card: it's NOT just for aggro matchups. It adds a surprisingly fast clock to this deck, sometimes pulling off a win before we even start to combo. I lean heavily on it in matchups where I'm reluctant to let the match go long (i.e. Scapeshift, Storm, etc). I'll also play it more aggressively than some. If I suspect an end-of-turn Fatal Push or Dismember, I'll hold back; otherwise, I'll jam it early. If the OP spends resources dealing with it on his/her turn -- especially if I get to fetch a land -- they did that at the cost of developing their own plan, and I consider that a positive exchange. As good as this card is, I did recently cut the 4th copy to help fit the two pairs of Visions, and to reduce the chance of seeing early multiples.
Serum Visions -- I reluctantly added two copies after reading all of your thoughts and occasionally finding myself not using my resources efficiently. The cantrip and draw-smoothing are nice, and the chip off the block trigger is great. Our first priority is slowing down the opponent, though, and I want to make sure I'm focused on curving out those sometimes-mana-intensive spells.
Ancestral Vision -- I chose this over Howling Mine -- on the advice of Grim_Flayer, I think? -- and it's spectacular. This deck is designed to buy time, which works hand-in-hand with the Suspend mechanic. It also plays very well with frozen Horrors. Our favorite seven words are probably "end my turn, take the next one," but when you can follow that up with "transform Thing in the Ice, draw five," well, YOU try not to giggle.
No Jace or Tiago -- Two of the best cards in Modern, but, in my opinion, too mana-intensive for spells that only indirectly advance our plan, and they don't (directly) help transform Thing in the Ice. Yes, Snapcaster lets us replay a spell ... but that's a four- or five- or seven- mana play (that relies on said spell being available in the Graveyard), so shouldn't it just be a Cryptic or a turn spell? Yes, Jace lets us dig, but at the cost of four mana, that's probably a full turn of no interaction, so again, shouldn't he just be a spell? I consider Thing in the Ice as taking up these slots, and I'm very happy with the results.
No Mission Briefing -- Same logic as Snapcaster, above. I don't want to devote slots to replaying spells when those slots could just be spells themselves, thus costing less mana and relying less on the Graveyard.
A bit on Search for Azcanta -- Our deck is designed to abuse what would normally be "symmetrical" options such as Howling Mine, so forget about the fact that the OP draws some cards. For two mana, would you like to Surveil 1, draw 1, and eventually transform into an extra land if needed; or would you prefer drawing BOTH of those cards every turn, which probably nets you more than one extra land over three turns and gets you more spells in hand, too? This is a very cool enchantment, but I don't think it's as good as Howling Mine in our deck. (Add that to the list of things I never thought I'd say. LOL)
I've spent a lot of time on the sideboard plan. My approach is to look at what spells don't work well in each matchup, and then find cards that fill those voids while still advancing our overall plan. I don't want hosers, I want cards that are easy to cast and buy us time. Attached is what I have so far. Across the top, I've highlighted likely and highly-likely matchups in the local meta. In the sideboard section, I've highlighted good and very good cards for a given matchup. Numbers of course indicate cards I'd side out/in. I haven't found glaring weak points in some of the midrange matchups, yet. Any thoughts?
Wow lot of thought into this Charileguide! Awesome!
I think the best part of this deck is that it is such a unique combo that it keeps people passionate.. you don't see this level discussion on a lot of the other threads..
So with Mission Briefing.. i think my biggest argument for it (or snapcaster) is that it allows for additional time warps specifically... it also allows for 5 exhaustion when you only run 3. These are the key cards and it smooths things out a lot. I don't think that snapcaster or mission briefing is 100% necessary, but I think over time playing either you notice that the progression of time warp into part the water veil into snap/mission briefing + time warp is a lot better then not having it...
And the only reason I don't run snapcaster and go for the mission briefing is because it allows for a quicker flip of Thing in the Ice
That being said, with timewalkinonsunshine's UR list, you can see how aggressive the bolt snap bolt was.. and in that one match he was able to bounce his snapcaster with jace to end the game.. so I think if you are running a second color splash of any sort, snapcaster becomes a lot better in that circumstance
As for the sideboard, I think it would be better to run Dispel over spell pierce. Generally if you are playing against a control matchup, they'll have the 2 extra mana. And there aren't many matchups where spell pierce is that strong.. Same applies with storm/other matchups where spell pierce would be sided in - dispel is usually better... especially when it is dispel and negates being sided in together... other than that I like the sideboard tech! I really should make a spreadsheet like that! so organized haha
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OHHHH.... also,
I just noticed that against some matchups since you aren't running Jace; without him and in cutting all 3x thing in the ice it makes your only win condition Part the Waterveil.. that seems risky given the rise in surgical extraction...
It may be useful to keep at least 1 if not 2 and only trim on them. Generally most decks will remove their answers to creatures anyhow against us since they win more so by disrupting the extra turns then by killing the land/thing
@charlieguide, thanks for the writeup, especially the sideboard guide! This is a pretty cool take on mono-U. I agree with @zcowan that the idea of sideboarding out all Thing in the Ice and leaving Part the Waterveil as the only wincon leaves me kind of uneasy. I also think that Thing is good against Storm because it lets you deal with Empty the Warrens tokens by bouncing them. Keep testing and let us know how your list evolves!
what are your thoughts about putting trickbind/disallow on sideboard for spirits matchup?
I don't think that Trickbind or Disallow do much of anything against Spirits. You'd much rather kill something than just counter a Mausoleum Wanderer activation or a Spell Queller trigger, and counterspells are generally bad against low to the ground decks with Cavern of Souls and Aether Vial.
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I've been interested in this archetype for a while and I'm finally going to build into it, could someone refer me to a good stock list that I could go off of?
Thanks in advance!
Modern: UW, Jeskai, Grixis, Blue moon, Esper, Sultai, UB, UWish
Legacy: Miracles
Generally all of them share the 9-10 extra turn effects, 6-7 mine effects, and 12-14 pieces of interaction as a general rule of thumb.
Hope this helps some!
I have been away from game for about 2 years now. I was playing the original mono blue list before the unbanning of Jace. I was wondering what the best way to build mono blue turns is now. It seems like there are so many new resources and I have no idea where to begin.
I would like to play mono-blue so only help with mono-blue please :D.
I would also like to keep the list fairly streamlined, so any suggestions on the most optimal mono-blue list around!
Thanks!
My first tip: read the three posts before yours. The further back you read, the more you'll learn. There's been some great discussion that you'd do well to take in. Also, this being Modern, with an enormous card pool and a wide-open meta, there is no "optimal" build. A lot of us like this deck concept because there are a so many ways to reach the endgame.
I have read back and definitely helped a lot but there is still a lot of confusion for me.
The things I am curious about:
Creature base: Should I run thing in the ice or a mixture of snaps and baby jace mainboard?
Mission briefing: This new card looks awesome has anyone had any testing of it? Can it replace snapcaster mage and allow me to run thing mainboard? Or do I run both mission briefing and snapcaster?
I am confused about how many jace to run. I am thinking 1-2 but leaning more towards 2 but not sure if that is correct?
I used to play only 1 howling mine and 4 dictates, but now thinking about running 4x dictate, 1x search for azcanta and 1-2 jace and no mines. Is that correct?
Also, opt/serum visions and remand/ How do they fit into the deck now?
And finally, what is the best way to set up land base now?
Thanks!
The core of Turn 3 Dictate, Turn 4 Cryptic, Turn 5 Combo, remains the same as far as I have seen.
Spirits
In regards to creature base, snapcaster is still an all star in this deck but I have moved away from him and am currently running Mission Briefing instead. If you are interested in mono blue, the casting cost isn't really difficult as double blue is easy with 18 islands and it's ability to also mill irrelevant cards has been super useful. I'm not really a fan of baby Jace as it's plus once flipped doesn't really do anything relevant and it dies to all forms of removal in the format.
HOWEVER, thing in the ice I would argue is the way to go. I have been playing with 3 mainboard for the past couple weeks since Ravnica was released and it makes the deck incredibly consistent. With 3 Thing in the Ice, 2 Part the Waterveil and Jace - that makes a total of 6 win conditions that easily fit into the deck without negatively affecting the combo. I also run 4 serum vision and 2 opt so it has been extremely easy to flip Thing within 1-2 extra turns and then win. The only downside is that it makes creature removal good against the deck in a way that normally they would side out after game one. I kind of have fixed that through using gigadrowse and exhaustion as a way to tap their lands before playing thing and it has worked.
With the whole howling mine/dictate part - I don't really think there is a definitive. I tried search for a while and was convinced it was the best thing but I think I was lying to myself. You almost never want it to flip as it just becomes a blue land (since most of the time you aren't really going to loot with it and cast an extra turn spell in one turn as it requires too much mana)
Since assassin's trophy is now a thing, I have just went back to 4 dictate 3 howling mine since I haven't been seeing as much targeted artifact removal. Actually with Knight of Autumn being thrown into a lot of GWx decks lately, I could actually see myself cutting a Dictate in place of something like Ancestral Vision again..
Hope this helped.. sorry for the length lol just super tired after a week of school and in the mood to talk magic haha
Hey man! That is awesome thanks for the insightful reply that has definitely helped. I am going to cut my snap and jace for 2-3x thing in the ice. I run 11 time warp effects. Did you cut one of those to run 3x thing in the ice? Also, do you run remand in the 2 drop spot?
Thanks again your post was extremely helpful!
I think if you are going to play Thing in the Ice, you need to play it as if it is a piece to the combo itself as in not run it out on turn 2 unless you are playing against a creature based deck that lacks a lot of removal..
With one in hand it is really easy to cast it and an extra turn effect all within the same turn.. unlike decks like blue moon that have to cast it so they can cantrip the next couple of turns to flip it, we can chain things together a lot better
Also, yeah I run 2 remand, 3 gigadrowse but lately I have actually contemplated running mainboard negate or mana leak.. I haven't really had too much time to playltest them but my reasoning is that a lot of the format is extremely cheap so remand isn't as useful against decks like mardu and even the different control decks
4 Time Warp
4 Temporal Mastery
1 Nexus of Fate
// Mine Effect
2 Search for Azcanta
4 Dictate of Kruphix
2 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
// Interaction
3 Gigadrowse
3 Exhaustion
4 Remand
3 Cryptic Command
1 Mission Briefing
2 Snapcaster Mage
4 Serum Visions
// Lands
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Gemstone Caverns
20 Island
1 Snow-Covered Island
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Dispel
3 Chalice of the Void
3 Thing in the Ice
1 Negate
2 Ceremonious Rejection
3 Damping Sphere
Most of the games were really not pro-active and I won twice milling myself out, using my Cryptic to bounce my Dictates and end the game with only Nexus of Fate in the library. This set up works wonderful with Azcanta and I am considering going to 2 Nexus of Fate for more efficiency.
In my case, Azcanta gets transformed as soon as possible and it is in itself a Time Warp because we got a bonus land and when the game is closing, it helps finding Jace or another Time Walk effect to continue. It has been really wonderful and helpful.
Next thing to figure out is about the sideboard, I'm quite happy with it but I don't know if it could be any better
Bolt snap bolt doing a lot of work against mardu pyro. That spicy cracking drake tech doesn't seem to be working well in actual games though
I'm currently writing a deck tech / tournament report that I'll post in the next day or two, but in the meantime, here's my list:
1x Howling Mine
4x Dictate of Kruphix
2x Jace, the Mind Sculptor
Time Walks
4x Time Warp
1x Part the Waterveil
3x Temporal Mastery
Almost Time Walks
4x Gigadrowse
3x Exhaustion
Other Spells
4x Serum Visions
4x Lightning Bolt
4x Snapcaster Mage
2x Cryptic Command
1x Commandeer
2x Scalding Tarn
1x Misty Rainforest
1x Polluted Delta
1x Flooded Strand
3x Island
4x Snow-Covered Island
3x Steam Vents
4x Sulfur Falls
1x Temple of Epiphany
1x Cascade Bluffs
1x Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1x Gemsmtone Caverns
2x Abrade
1x Pyroclasm
2x Anger of the Gods
2x Surgical Extraction
1x Commandeer
1x Engineered Explosives
2x Crackling Drake
1x Vendilion Clique
3x Thing in the Ice
@timewalkinonsunshine (love the name!) Congrats on the solid finish, and for having the guts to take this deck to a GP. Looking forward to seeing your report & tech, especially your thoughts on splashing R and maindeck Commandeer.
@zcowan, Part the Waterveil, & spigushe, Great continued discussion on mono-U. I'm still on that plan, too. Please see my thoughts below.
2 Serum Visions
2 Ancestral Vision
4 Dictate of Kruphix
Disruption & Delay
4 Gigadrowse
4 Remand
3 Thing in the Ice
3 Exhaustion
3 Cryptic Command
4 Time Warp
4 Temporal Mastery
3 Part the Waterveil
1 Nexus of Fate
Land
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
1 Gemstone Caverns
1 Radiant Fountain
4 Snow-Covered Island
16 Island
2 Negate
1 Spell Pierce
1 Flashfreeze
2 Shadow of Doubt
2 Boomerang
2 Downsize
2 Ratchet Bomb
3 Chalice of the Void
A few notes:
Thing in the Ice -- zcowan is right, it's amazing. Props to whoever suggested it on this forum a few months ago. The most important point on this card: it's NOT just for aggro matchups. It adds a surprisingly fast clock to this deck, sometimes pulling off a win before we even start to combo. I lean heavily on it in matchups where I'm reluctant to let the match go long (i.e. Scapeshift, Storm, etc). I'll also play it more aggressively than some. If I suspect an end-of-turn Fatal Push or Dismember, I'll hold back; otherwise, I'll jam it early. If the OP spends resources dealing with it on his/her turn -- especially if I get to fetch a land -- they did that at the cost of developing their own plan, and I consider that a positive exchange. As good as this card is, I did recently cut the 4th copy to help fit the two pairs of Visions, and to reduce the chance of seeing early multiples.
Serum Visions -- I reluctantly added two copies after reading all of your thoughts and occasionally finding myself not using my resources efficiently. The cantrip and draw-smoothing are nice, and the chip off the block trigger is great. Our first priority is slowing down the opponent, though, and I want to make sure I'm focused on curving out those sometimes-mana-intensive spells.
Ancestral Vision -- I chose this over Howling Mine -- on the advice of Grim_Flayer, I think? -- and it's spectacular. This deck is designed to buy time, which works hand-in-hand with the Suspend mechanic. It also plays very well with frozen Horrors. Our favorite seven words are probably "end my turn, take the next one," but when you can follow that up with "transform Thing in the Ice, draw five," well, YOU try not to giggle.
No Jace or Tiago -- Two of the best cards in Modern, but, in my opinion, too mana-intensive for spells that only indirectly advance our plan, and they don't (directly) help transform Thing in the Ice. Yes, Snapcaster lets us replay a spell ... but that's a four- or five- or seven- mana play (that relies on said spell being available in the Graveyard), so shouldn't it just be a Cryptic or a turn spell? Yes, Jace lets us dig, but at the cost of four mana, that's probably a full turn of no interaction, so again, shouldn't he just be a spell? I consider Thing in the Ice as taking up these slots, and I'm very happy with the results.
No Mission Briefing -- Same logic as Snapcaster, above. I don't want to devote slots to replaying spells when those slots could just be spells themselves, thus costing less mana and relying less on the Graveyard.
A bit on Search for Azcanta -- Our deck is designed to abuse what would normally be "symmetrical" options such as Howling Mine, so forget about the fact that the OP draws some cards. For two mana, would you like to Surveil 1, draw 1, and eventually transform into an extra land if needed; or would you prefer drawing BOTH of those cards every turn, which probably nets you more than one extra land over three turns and gets you more spells in hand, too? This is a very cool enchantment, but I don't think it's as good as Howling Mine in our deck. (Add that to the list of things I never thought I'd say. LOL)
I've spent a lot of time on the sideboard plan. My approach is to look at what spells don't work well in each matchup, and then find cards that fill those voids while still advancing our overall plan. I don't want hosers, I want cards that are easy to cast and buy us time. Attached is what I have so far. Across the top, I've highlighted likely and highly-likely matchups in the local meta. In the sideboard section, I've highlighted good and very good cards for a given matchup. Numbers of course indicate cards I'd side out/in. I haven't found glaring weak points in some of the midrange matchups, yet. Any thoughts?
Looking forward to seeing your feedback. Thanks!
I think the best part of this deck is that it is such a unique combo that it keeps people passionate.. you don't see this level discussion on a lot of the other threads..
So with Mission Briefing.. i think my biggest argument for it (or snapcaster) is that it allows for additional time warps specifically... it also allows for 5 exhaustion when you only run 3. These are the key cards and it smooths things out a lot. I don't think that snapcaster or mission briefing is 100% necessary, but I think over time playing either you notice that the progression of time warp into part the water veil into snap/mission briefing + time warp is a lot better then not having it...
And the only reason I don't run snapcaster and go for the mission briefing is because it allows for a quicker flip of Thing in the Ice
That being said, with timewalkinonsunshine's UR list, you can see how aggressive the bolt snap bolt was.. and in that one match he was able to bounce his snapcaster with jace to end the game.. so I think if you are running a second color splash of any sort, snapcaster becomes a lot better in that circumstance
As for the sideboard, I think it would be better to run Dispel over spell pierce. Generally if you are playing against a control matchup, they'll have the 2 extra mana. And there aren't many matchups where spell pierce is that strong.. Same applies with storm/other matchups where spell pierce would be sided in - dispel is usually better... especially when it is dispel and negates being sided in together... other than that I like the sideboard tech! I really should make a spreadsheet like that! so organized haha
I just noticed that against some matchups since you aren't running Jace; without him and in cutting all 3x thing in the ice it makes your only win condition Part the Waterveil.. that seems risky given the rise in surgical extraction...
It may be useful to keep at least 1 if not 2 and only trim on them. Generally most decks will remove their answers to creatures anyhow against us since they win more so by disrupting the extra turns then by killing the land/thing
@charlieguide, thanks for the writeup, especially the sideboard guide! This is a pretty cool take on mono-U. I agree with @zcowan that the idea of sideboarding out all Thing in the Ice and leaving Part the Waterveil as the only wincon leaves me kind of uneasy. I also think that Thing is good against Storm because it lets you deal with Empty the Warrens tokens by bouncing them. Keep testing and let us know how your list evolves!