So, the Rivals of Ixalan spoiler is out and frankly it doesn't give us too many cards in White or Blue or artifacts and lands which is good because I don't have to spend more money on cards.
Here's what I think are some possible cards to include in this deck or sideboard:
White zetalpa, primal dawn - the only white card that can maybe fit in this deck, I was excited that this dino has indestructible but it just doesn't affect the board enough when it comes into play, and when you attack you can hit for 8 damage but unless you can pump it up that's as much as you'll do on turn 9 or turn 10 which is not that exciting and it is still gone to exile effects and cast out so I'm not going to play this in the deck probably.
Blue crafty cutpurse= I like this card in the sideboard against decks that make a lot of treasure tokens, and the scarab god as well as GPG decks, they will exile a creature and try to make a token and you can drop this, steal their token and get a 2/2 guy. It should be very good against the scarab god since they only make 1 token a turn and if you get that it can swing the game in your favor. I will be playing a couple of these in the sideboard probably.
Flood of recollection- return a countered approach, or a counter spell or a glimmer of genius, fumigate, etc... to my hand in the late game is good. There may be a way to fit 1 of this maindeck.
horns***gle- this is a good sideboard card against creature heavy decks, and being able to get a treasure token is not that bad to speed you up. Not sure yet if I want to play 1 or 2 of these in the sideboard.
induced amnesia- I like this card because if you have just cast approach and you still have 3-4 cards in hand, the next turn you can draw a card and maybe have 5 cards in hand, you can cast this and draw 5 extra cards meaning you may be able to draw another approach but basically it will speed up your chance to draw approach after casting it the first time. I'm not sure how good this is main deck, and if there's a chance to fit 1 or 2 of these instead of other card draw cards.
Nezahal, primal tide- this is my favorite of all the cards in this set, and I will fit 1 in the main deck and maybe a second one in the sideboard against decks with counters, including temur energy and friends. I think it's a very strong card, and definitely, the best card to be in our deck even though it's basically a 7/7 for seven mana but it's other abilities especially the draw ability is really strong.
Multicolor
Azor, the lawbringer- this is kinda questionable, it's good that it's a 6 to cast 6/6 flyer that stop the opp from trying to deal with it by using spells on their turn, the ability to gain life and draw cards is strong, but not sure you want to tap out for that since you need 3 mana plus X so at most you'll be gaining 2-3 life and drawing 2-3 cards but you'd be tapped out which usually you don't want to do. I see this as a maybe sideboard card, but I don't see how this would fit main deck.
Land
arch of orazca- this may work as a one of in the deck, I'm not sure how fast we can ascend in this deck, we will have 7-8 lands usually by the time we win, and maybe a cast out or two out but that's stretching it, we just don't run enough permanents besides lands to reach 10 of them by turn 7-8 consistently, it will have to be tested but I guess 1 in the main deck can't hurt.
So that's my opinion on what cards can be included, I've already decided to buy Nezahal, and play 1 or maybe even 2 main deck, and also 1 arch of orazca, but the other cards will need to be play tested to see if they work out as I think they should.
Nezahal is a control basher, so sure sideboard but not really a win con I think. Rather play the UW guy but even he sucks compared to Scarab God so blah. Control is still relegated.
The only highly efficient removal card is Moment of Craving
I don't know, I think Azor, The Lawbringer might be the card that makes U/W control a possible contender with that sphinx relevation effect and not letting your opp do anything about it during their next turn is pretty dam good.
The problem is you have to use the ability when you attack with him... which means spending mana on your turn during attack phase to fill your hand.
That's after sticking him and surviving instants... so maybe you're waiting until 8 or 9 mana just to cast the guy safely. Seems if you have enough draw in the deck already he's a questionable wincon.
I like the Dino better as a one of incase you're against control.
Honestly pirates, vamps, and merfolk look low to the ground. If any or all of them end up happening control will have a very hard time inside turn 5... and Merfolk/pirates will likely have counter magic on hand.
This set is not looking to fix much. Moment of Craving looks to be the best tech.
I'd probably rather defend Zatalpa or Nez over Azor but neither of them add to your gameplan. Tetzimoc, Primal Death and Esper would be a better bet I think as you can mark as a mana flush and gives you a win con plus a sweeper.
The problem is you have to use the ability when you attack with him... which means spending mana on your turn during attack phase to fill your hand.
That's after sticking him and surviving instants... so maybe you're waiting until 8 or 9 mana just to cast the guy safely. Seems if you have enough draw in the deck already he's a questionable wincon.
I like the Dino better as a one of incase you're against control.
Honestly pirates, vamps, and merfolk look low to the ground. If any or all of them end up happening control will have a very hard time inside turn 5... and Merfolk/pirates will likely have counter magic on hand.
This set is not looking to fix much. Moment of Craving looks to be the best tech.
I'd probably rather defend Zatalpa or Nez over Azor but neither of them add to your gameplan. Tetzimoc, Primal Death and Esper would be a better bet I think as you can mark as a mana flush and gives you a win con plus a sweeper.
You are right I honestly did not see that Azor had to attack to be able to get his effect. That sucks jaja. I honestly don't like the others because they are so expensive. Probably yhe black dino might have a chance if you go the esper route. I guess energy will still be the best deck without a fight again.
The problem is you have to use the ability when you attack with him... which means spending mana on your turn during attack phase to fill your hand.
That's after sticking him and surviving instants... so maybe you're waiting until 8 or 9 mana just to cast the guy safely. Seems if you have enough draw in the deck already he's a questionable wincon.
I like the Dino better as a one of incase you're against control.
Honestly pirates, vamps, and merfolk look low to the ground. If any or all of them end up happening control will have a very hard time inside turn 5... and Merfolk/pirates will likely have counter magic on hand.
This set is not looking to fix much. Moment of Craving looks to be the best tech.
I'd probably rather defend Zatalpa or Nez over Azor but neither of them add to your gameplan. Tetzimoc, Primal Death and Esper would be a better bet I think as you can mark as a mana flush and gives you a win con plus a sweeper.
You are right I honestly did not see that Azor had to attack to be able to get his effect. That sucks jaja. I honestly don't like the others because they are so expensive. Probably yhe black dino might have a chance if you go the esper route. I guess energy will still be the best deck without a fight again.
As I mentioned in my review of the few cards good for this deck that are in Rivals, of course, Azor is a possible choice for this deck...but Nezahal is a much better choice for this control deck, either main deck or sideboard. I was one of the people who played Sphinx of the final word main deck before it rotated and due to it I won almost all first games against other control decks, so I will be playing this Dino main deck as well.
UW control didnt get anything. The only card with a possibility is Nezahal. Everything else is garbage. If you cant beat Energy with with what you have now in UW or UWR Approach, the new set isnt going to fix it.
Meanwhile, I have been on UW Drake Haven. Its been a lot of fun and competitive.
I honestly do not see why we would want to run any cards from Rivals of Ixalan. Our primary win condition is a spell that's the name sake of the deck, and adding anything even close to it's CMC seems like a bad idea.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Currently playing: MODERN BRG Jund WU Control UBRG Dredge BG Elves G Tron
Affinity
Building: WR Boros Burn UB Tezzerator
I also play Legacy, and EDH. Follow me at MTGPackFoils on Twitter.
UW control didnt get anything. The only card with a possibility is Nezahal. Everything else is garbage. If you cant beat Energy with with what you have now in UW or UWR Approach, the new set isnt going to fix it.
Meanwhile, I have been on UW Drake Haven. Its been a lot of fun and competitive.
Yeah, we didn't get much. My "glass is half full" thinking is the meta will be diversified with more tribal decks but since they are all creature-based, we'll continue to get easy game ones against everyone except RR.
The cycling deck is a ton of fun to play but I found that (for better or worse) I prefer the win con finality of Approach of the Second Sun. Sometimes I wish I didn't. I didn't find a way to pull it off, but a Vile Manifestation would be a pretty cool finisher in the cycling deck.
Unfortunately UW and control got nothing. The counter magic they gave out was to aggro. They are not learning fast enough. Better to wait and see if Maro really learned anything and we get more counter spells and hard removal in Dominaria.
Esper seems to be the only thing if you want to include new cards. This set is pure creature feature. Most the exile cards are too slow at 4 CMC.
Merfolk will be scary because of small counters.
U/B pirates will also be hard, they have easy counters to Settle the Wreckage and Fumigate
Vampires might be the easiest to deal with as control but they have a lot of options for filling the board fast.
I too used Sphinx of the Final Word main and it is great against other control but the problem is how many control matches can you really expect to play right now? In my meta if Standard starts firing again it's likely 1. Not really worth main deck prep for and blue Dino is more work than protecting Approach.
I play 2 Baral in my Sideboard. Against both Control and postboard Temur Energy, it allows you to get ahead in counterwars and gain tempo (which is the biggest factor against energy g2-3).
As for Nimble Obstructionist and Champion of Wits, they aren't bad but the problem is that we can't take advantage of the bodies on the field very well. Champion of wits doesn't trade favorably with most creatures (and if you're tapping out, it should be for an approach rather than a 4/4) and Obstructionist comes down a turn too late to realistically deal with Longtusk cub. Both cards have their uses, but I feel that they're too narrow. I do think that Obstructionist is quite a bit better in the Drake Haven deck.
As for Ritual of Rejuvenation, It simply isn't very good. In the Matchups where the 4 life is going to be relevant, it's far too slow to impact the game.
I am really not sure what that variant of UW Control looks like yet, but to say UW didn’t get anything... is not really all that accurate. Maybe there is an Esper Shell looking to stall into Azor’s Gateway + Torment of Hailfire, who knows. But I think current iterations of Control have been needing to change for a while now, and this set gives some tools to do that.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
STANDARD|UW Control MODERN| UBG Midrange PAUPER| UG Fog COMMANDER| UBG The Mimeoplasm
Have you seen the winning lists for MTGO lately? Tournament lists? Control is barely showing up. There was one UB control ranked 17-32 in the last big tourney.
I would say they need to print cards that help control be good and not struggle starting on T1. There should always be a control deck that's Tier 1 but that hasn't been the case for a long while. They aren't printing the right answers still nor the right counters.
yeah looks like the UW Approach deck didn't gain anything from Rivals. Possible got even weaker because of the new counter spell which will counter our settle the wreckage.
I'm personally not excited about enchantment speed removal. I've used Silk Wrap many a time in several builds but I prefer Moment of Craving plus Fatal Push and doing an Esper build. Of course that could be all out the window if everything is just a bit too fast since the mana isn't as good.
Taking a few hits and Settling is also a crap deal in my view because ramp... especially since Energy and Red builds are only running 20-22 lands it gives them more gas off the top.
I definitely agree with you about settle - I've actually been boarding it out vs Temur. They can play around it so easily by holding back creatures (and still clocking you pretty significantly) and Having to cast it during their turn just puts us more vulnerable to counterspells. I think that you need a mix of Efficient answers (Meltdown, Essence Scatter, whatnot) and Wrath effects (Fumigate, Settle) but waiting for a good settle or for 5 mana for fumigate isn't a good enough answer on its own. Ultimately I prefer Baffling End to fatal push as you can't reliably turn on revolt (whereas End will always hit Ferocidon, Ahn-Crop Crasher, Virtuoso) without fetches and exiling vs killing is relevant vs Earthshaker Khenra (which is one of the biggest problem cards imo from RR). Just my 2 cents (and I don't play esper, so I might be entirely miss-evaluating push entirely). Moment of Craving certainly seems nice vs Red, almost like an Essence Extraction with less stringent colour requirements. Have you been playing Extraction, and if so, have you experienced any difficulties with the BB casting cost?
No extraction for a long time. The BB and costing 3 isn't worth it when you are 1 away from Vraska's Contempt. 1 or 2 mana is where you need to be. Jeskai has the wee burn spells but things get so big so fast they don't help you post turn 3. Tough place to be at the moment.
Here's what I think are some possible cards to include in this deck or sideboard:
White
zetalpa, primal dawn - the only white card that can maybe fit in this deck, I was excited that this dino has indestructible but it just doesn't affect the board enough when it comes into play, and when you attack you can hit for 8 damage but unless you can pump it up that's as much as you'll do on turn 9 or turn 10 which is not that exciting and it is still gone to exile effects and cast out so I'm not going to play this in the deck probably.
Blue
crafty cutpurse= I like this card in the sideboard against decks that make a lot of treasure tokens, and the scarab god as well as GPG decks, they will exile a creature and try to make a token and you can drop this, steal their token and get a 2/2 guy. It should be very good against the scarab god since they only make 1 token a turn and if you get that it can swing the game in your favor. I will be playing a couple of these in the sideboard probably.
Flood of recollection- return a countered approach, or a counter spell or a glimmer of genius, fumigate, etc... to my hand in the late game is good. There may be a way to fit 1 of this maindeck.
horns***gle- this is a good sideboard card against creature heavy decks, and being able to get a treasure token is not that bad to speed you up. Not sure yet if I want to play 1 or 2 of these in the sideboard.
induced amnesia- I like this card because if you have just cast approach and you still have 3-4 cards in hand, the next turn you can draw a card and maybe have 5 cards in hand, you can cast this and draw 5 extra cards meaning you may be able to draw another approach but basically it will speed up your chance to draw approach after casting it the first time. I'm not sure how good this is main deck, and if there's a chance to fit 1 or 2 of these instead of other card draw cards.
Nezahal, primal tide- this is my favorite of all the cards in this set, and I will fit 1 in the main deck and maybe a second one in the sideboard against decks with counters, including temur energy and friends. I think it's a very strong card, and definitely, the best card to be in our deck even though it's basically a 7/7 for seven mana but it's other abilities especially the draw ability is really strong.
Multicolor
Azor, the lawbringer- this is kinda questionable, it's good that it's a 6 to cast 6/6 flyer that stop the opp from trying to deal with it by using spells on their turn, the ability to gain life and draw cards is strong, but not sure you want to tap out for that since you need 3 mana plus X so at most you'll be gaining 2-3 life and drawing 2-3 cards but you'd be tapped out which usually you don't want to do. I see this as a maybe sideboard card, but I don't see how this would fit main deck.
Land
arch of orazca- this may work as a one of in the deck, I'm not sure how fast we can ascend in this deck, we will have 7-8 lands usually by the time we win, and maybe a cast out or two out but that's stretching it, we just don't run enough permanents besides lands to reach 10 of them by turn 7-8 consistently, it will have to be tested but I guess 1 in the main deck can't hurt.
So that's my opinion on what cards can be included, I've already decided to buy Nezahal, and play 1 or maybe even 2 main deck, and also 1 arch of orazca, but the other cards will need to be play tested to see if they work out as I think they should.
Check out my Youtube channel where I upload MTG content videos twice a week!
Mtg Lifestyle
I don't know, I think Azor, The Lawbringer might be the card that makes U/W control a possible contender with that sphinx relevation effect and not letting your opp do anything about it during their next turn is pretty dam good.
That's after sticking him and surviving instants... so maybe you're waiting until 8 or 9 mana just to cast the guy safely. Seems if you have enough draw in the deck already he's a questionable wincon.
I like the Dino better as a one of incase you're against control.
Honestly pirates, vamps, and merfolk look low to the ground. If any or all of them end up happening control will have a very hard time inside turn 5... and Merfolk/pirates will likely have counter magic on hand.
This set is not looking to fix much. Moment of Craving looks to be the best tech.
I'd probably rather defend Zatalpa or Nez over Azor but neither of them add to your gameplan. Tetzimoc, Primal Death and Esper would be a better bet I think as you can mark as a mana flush and gives you a win con plus a sweeper.
You are right I honestly did not see that Azor had to attack to be able to get his effect. That sucks jaja. I honestly don't like the others because they are so expensive. Probably yhe black dino might have a chance if you go the esper route. I guess energy will still be the best deck without a fight again.
As I mentioned in my review of the few cards good for this deck that are in Rivals, of course, Azor is a possible choice for this deck...but Nezahal is a much better choice for this control deck, either main deck or sideboard. I was one of the people who played Sphinx of the final word main deck before it rotated and due to it I won almost all first games against other control decks, so I will be playing this Dino main deck as well.
Check out my Youtube channel where I upload MTG content videos twice a week!
Mtg Lifestyle
Meanwhile, I have been on UW Drake Haven. Its been a lot of fun and competitive.
C Long Live Eldrazi C
MODERN
BRG Jund
WU Control
UBRG Dredge
BG Elves
G Tron
Affinity
Building:
WR Boros Burn
UB Tezzerator
I also play Legacy, and EDH. Follow me at MTGPackFoils on Twitter.
Yeah, we didn't get much. My "glass is half full" thinking is the meta will be diversified with more tribal decks but since they are all creature-based, we'll continue to get easy game ones against everyone except RR.
The cycling deck is a ton of fun to play but I found that (for better or worse) I prefer the win con finality of Approach of the Second Sun. Sometimes I wish I didn't. I didn't find a way to pull it off, but a Vile Manifestation would be a pretty cool finisher in the cycling deck.
Esper seems to be the only thing if you want to include new cards. This set is pure creature feature. Most the exile cards are too slow at 4 CMC.
Merfolk will be scary because of small counters.
U/B pirates will also be hard, they have easy counters to Settle the Wreckage and Fumigate
Vampires might be the easiest to deal with as control but they have a lot of options for filling the board fast.
I too used Sphinx of the Final Word main and it is great against other control but the problem is how many control matches can you really expect to play right now? In my meta if Standard starts firing again it's likely 1. Not really worth main deck prep for and blue Dino is more work than protecting Approach.
I've seen some decks online with Baral, Chief of Compliance.
What deck is he good against?
Any thoughts on the following for sideboard
1. Nimble Obstructionist
2. Champion of Wits
3. Ritual of Rejuvination
Any thoughts on putting in As Foretold?
Will certainly help the mana later on when casting Approach
As for Nimble Obstructionist and Champion of Wits, they aren't bad but the problem is that we can't take advantage of the bodies on the field very well. Champion of wits doesn't trade favorably with most creatures (and if you're tapping out, it should be for an approach rather than a 4/4) and Obstructionist comes down a turn too late to realistically deal with Longtusk cub. Both cards have their uses, but I feel that they're too narrow. I do think that Obstructionist is quite a bit better in the Drake Haven deck.
As for Ritual of Rejuvenation, It simply isn't very good. In the Matchups where the 4 life is going to be relevant, it's far too slow to impact the game.
I am really not sure what that variant of UW Control looks like yet, but to say UW didn’t get anything... is not really all that accurate. Maybe there is an Esper Shell looking to stall into Azor’s Gateway + Torment of Hailfire, who knows. But I think current iterations of Control have been needing to change for a while now, and this set gives some tools to do that.
STANDARD|UW Control MODERN| UBG Midrange PAUPER| UG Fog COMMANDER| UBG The Mimeoplasm
I would say they need to print cards that help control be good and not struggle starting on T1. There should always be a control deck that's Tier 1 but that hasn't been the case for a long while. They aren't printing the right answers still nor the right counters.
Taking a few hits and Settling is also a crap deal in my view because ramp... especially since Energy and Red builds are only running 20-22 lands it gives them more gas off the top.
Considering removing authority of the consuls in the sideboard as a more permanent solution and replacing it with baffling end when rivals releases
C Long Live Eldrazi C