If you want more impactful sideboard cards for the creature spam decks, Night of Souls' Betrayal is on-par with Stony Silence in those matchups. It also happens to lock out Affinity as well, so you can technically cut Stony Silences for them. That's what I used to do, before deciding that Company decks were to small a piece of the metagame to warrant running 14 black mana sources.
I feel like permanents are the best way to use Azcanta after playing a handful of matches over the last two weeks
I don't think it necessarily has to be permanents, just anything that can swing boardstates and either give or take a lot of positional advantage. We already play 3x Verdict, but swapping the 5-6th spot removal spells for something heavier like Runed Halos or Baby Gideons could work. We don't have Counterbalance, but if there's a similar card that was an ace against spell-based combo, this deck would be Tier 1, easy.
Worlds is less relevant than an FNM at a shop in the middle of nowhere. In 2 weeks UB Azcanta will look like a random deck people tried for a while and you'll probably forget you had this conversation.
It looks like UW Big Spells w/Azcanta is hanging on to Tier 2. UB Draw-Go w/Azcanta is currently at Tier 3 levels, with 7 decks seeing significantly more wins than it.
Gerry Thompson wrote an article for SCG on the Search in Modern:
In theory, Search for Azcanta seems more dangerous in a larger card pool. You have a wider array of high-value cards to find, plus having an extra mana source lying around is potentially more impactful. Additionally, Search for Azcanta is much easier to transform in Modern thanks to Thought Scour and the fetchlands. It's almost trivial. Think about how easy it is to cast Gurmag Angler on Turn 2. If you are hell-bent on transforming Search for Azcanta the turn after you cast it, you should be able to make that a reality.
You would ideally be finding cards to help you lock up the game or end it. Discard is rather poor because your opponent will likely be empty-handed, so you're probably looking for counterspells. Remand and Mana Leak get worse as the game goes on, but Logic Knot, Cryptic Command, and Spell Snare don't.
Finally, you should be able to find a win condition.
He then goes on to talk about some of the Combo/Control and Expensive Sorcery decks that he wants to try it with. Scapseshift, Thopter-Sword, UWR Nahiri, etc.
On all fronts it's looking like Search is going to find it's niche in decks with prison pieces, planeswalkers, or other positional advantage cards.
I don't consider the Spell Queller Flash deck to be the same archetype. It's more like what UWR was supposed to be in the first place, a Counterburn deck. Restoration Angel wasn't impactful enough but it's good to see Spell Queller finally made the deck functional. Granted there was a 1 month stretch where UWR Nahiri was the rage before people figured out what to do against it and it became unplayable.
Not to beat the dead horse any further, but 3x Leyline and 2 Surgical sounds like a pretty crummy sideboard plan for a UWR deck. I would think that if he boarded in 3x Clique alongside Purges or Wear/Tear and Negate he would at least be favored post-board with UWR. UWR can clock pretty damn well, especially when they get to leave in Bolts. EDIT: By UWR I'm referring to the classic build with only Snapcasters, not the flash build.
I tried Spell Queller, but ended up going with Cliques. Queller is better in matchups where it can block 2/x creatures, but is a slower clock and rarely comes out on turn 3 unless you force it.
hey, here a control player that sometimes plays storm. Yesterday played storm in a 8 round tournament going 6-2 and lost against esper control.
Game 1 I flooded, and my opp had 2 cryptics, snare and 2 snaps, nothing special.
Game 2 I won with a turn 2 blood moon and turn 3 six goblins, enough.
Game 3 he opened with seize, turn 2 brutallity, turn 3 snap seize, turn 4 esper charm to discard and turn 5 snap charm. Concede.
I hope it helps you all
Sounds about right. Game 1 is a toss-up depending on whose draw is better and Games 2 and 3 revolve around early cheese.
If he had that sequence in game 3 he would only have 1 card left in hand and 2 Snapcasters on board, right? You could have stormed off with a Gifts off the top; why concede?
I didn't realize some of them stopped playing Blood Moon; that's pretty greedy. I suppose Blood Moon isn't good against UW, so that makes sense.
I can't imagine Storm being that rough post-board with no Blood Moons. Their ability to spike you goes way down and their deck is just a slower version of their maindeck. That Caleb Scherer sideboard plan actually looks pretty bad to me. Pieces of the Puzzle in place of Gifts is just trading Divinations; waste of sideboard space. Past in Flames and Grapeshot for Empty is standard, but removing Electromancers instead of rituals makes the deck better early and worse late. UW only has 4x Path to Exile; boarding down to 4 creatures from 7 feels as if it makes the remaining Electromancers worse.
I used to board Pieces, but only to play in addition to Gifts as a 2-of. I'm hardly a Storm master, I suppose...
Trying to lock out a Storm deck with Surgical is a bad idea in my opinion. This sounds like the same logic that had people losing so hard to Tron. Surgical is unreliable enough against a one-trick pony like Living End, as it's only live after you resolve a counterspell or Thoughtseize on a win condition. Boarding Surgical against a deck with multiple win conditions seems suspect, but to each his own.
Storm is "the other deck" that I played in Modern. Post board you just board in Empty the Warrens and Blood Moons and cheese the Control deck in the early game. You don't need your graveyard at all, and Grapeshot is more likely to kill a Snapcaster than anything else.
I maindeck Runed Halo but would board it out against a Storm deck. Granted, I never actually realized that Gifts was targeted...I still think the cards to worry about are Empty and Blood Moon, which is part of the reason I moved to Detention Sphere in the sideboard.
If you can't lock out a deck or bury it with Revelation, you're only chance at a good matchup is going to be by boarding into a tempo plan. They can kill Vendilion Clique and Snapcasters, but those cards allow you to clock combo decks without putting yourself down a card.
Worlds is less relevant than an FNM at a shop in the middle of nowhere. In 2 weeks UB Azcanta will look like a random deck people tried for a while and you'll probably forget you had this conversation.
On the contrary, I think Azcanta incentivizes cheap interaction. If you can impulse + interact each turn the chances of your opponent winning the game is dramatically lowered. Cards like Path, Push, Logic Knot, etc. go up in value, not down. High-impact spells tend to be expensive. Sweepers can recoup tempo, but a lock piece like Chalice cannot. I don't think Azcanta is going to push the decks it is in towards prison (they'll never be as good as Lantern or Chalice decks and as such, they'll be little reason to do this), but it is going to push the control decks it is in to play more cheap interaction. You're also still going to need some other CA spell whether that is Esper Charm, Glimmer, Scour the Lab, etc. as Azcanta gets worse in multiples and is vulnerable to LD where the instant-speed CA isn't (plus you just need a critical number of cards that +CA). In other words, it's going to replace cards like Sphinx's Rev, and more decks will be playing more 1 and 2 mana interaction. I wouldn't ever play 4 wraths MB in an Azcanta deck, but I could definitely see these decks cut one for another path or push or blessed alliance, etc. Even a card like Deprive goes up in value because Azcanta is essentially rampant growth so it's actually tempo-neutral in conjunction and does the thing for 2 mana.
"Prison" doesn't mean just Lantern or Chalice; I said multiple times that it rewards decks that can establish board presence and soft-locks. UW Control or Esper Planeswalkers would be on the prison side of the spectrum.
Sweepers are an example of a high-impact card that causes swings in positional advantage.
You're never going to live the dream with repeatable dig spells of answering every threat your opponent plays. It's the same trap as Mystical Teachings. 3 mana to draw a card is a worse rate than Think Twice; the mana is justified by the difference in card quality between a random card and whatever you manage to find. Read: it should consistently be worth multiple cards and impact the board.
Same applies to every win condition you could have in play at the time it flips - from Goblin Guide all the way up to and Including the Azcanta itself. Every turn you get to impulse, the less likely they are to win. That's how card advantage works. In no way does that follow that it works better with soft-locks. Soft locks work better with a card advantage engine, absolutely, but the reverse does't have to be true as well.
You don't need huge impacts on the board since you're able to pull off multiple effecient answers in a turn. Unless you sat on your thumbs and did actual nothing before you flipped azcanta, the opponent shouldnt have more than a few threats on the board, which means 2 turns of drawing answers plus whatever you would normally draw or have should put you even and then way ahead.
See, that's the Magical Christmas Land from where all bad Control decks originate:
"Assuming I don't draw terrible, I should only be behind by maybe a card or 2. If I just draw 2 extra cards then I should be at parity, and every Divination after than will put me further and further ahead!"
Then reality hits you realize that between answers not lining up, higher land densities, and your opponent having a 10% likelihood of the "nut draw" that you don't even have access to, you have to move mountains with a Control deck for it to be competitive. You have to build your deck to catch up, not keep up. All the torrential Gearhulk decks in standard are a perfect example; they're great except for the games where they fall behind. A single removal spell makes your turn 6 Gearhulk an expensive card draw spell that doesn't get you out of the hole you're in. They've been great for their debut weekends but never greater than Tier 2, going long.
Note that the successful Search for Azcanta deck in Standard are the UW Approach decks with 5 sweepers and 3 massive lifegain spells that literally just win 2 turns after resolving. That's exactly what I'm saying Search promotes.
I agree that the deck needs to be reconfigured a bit for Azcanta, but not to the point of changing the fundamental strategy of the deck. I don't think it's necessary to become a prison style deck, as you mentioned. Not really too sure why you think that actually, seems like you stated it without expanding on the reason you arrived at that conclusion. I don't think planes walkers and enchantments like counterbalance/halo are anymore necessary than ever.
Adding a single card engine to the deck doesn't play out any differently than, in my experience, than playing with a card like Rev. As I've said, it seems to me that the only real difference in deck design is that rev can be replaced and that it's possible we may need assurances for the inevitable situations where GQ style lands take out our azcanta. This can be accomplished by playing more copies or maybe through other means (spreading seas for example, though I don't think that particular route is optimal for this deck, but there are certainly options out there).
My main point is azcanta seems to be a fine engine for draw go strategies, look at the world championship for example. Obviously standard is a different beast but azcanta is nearly singlehandedly carrying multiple drawgo style control archetypes through the tournament.
I thought I spelled it out pretty well, but I suppose it wouldn't hurt to repeat.
Azcanta rewards positional advantage permanents. Casting Impulse each turn opens up the possibility of soft-locks, similar to what we saw with Dragonloard Ojutai in Standard. Once you untap with a planeswalkers on turn 5 and this thing flips, it becomes less likely with every passing turn that your opponent will draw out of it before the planeswalker ultimates. Same could apply to Crucible of Worlds locks. The search helps setup and protect these board states, which will shift any (successful) list over time towards this end of the spectrum. People do things like cut sweepers for Tasigur in their Draw-Go decks, so there's no saying you have to build your decks a certain way, but when there's an obvious path of least resistance a successful archetype will tend to evolve in that direction. That's assuming the deck has exposure and there are articles and tournament results available.
Azcanta disincentivises low-impact, one-for-one disruption and/or Divination effects. This isn't as intuitive, but Azcanta is highly mana-inefficient in terms of material (card) advantage. Phyrexian Arena effect exists that will give you a card for less mana each turn, and they're hardly playable cards. Similar to the way that Mystical Tutor gives you the option of a 5-mana Path to Exile, a 6-mana counterspell, or a 7-mana Divination, when you're burning 3 mana each turn on a dig effect you need the answers you're finding to have huge impacts on the board. You'll feel it when you're staring down lethal in 2 turns and you begin wondering exactly you could get off an activation that would justify sinking half your available mana each turn into.
I think people are looking at it wrong, trying to slot it into their decks. This card is an engine all by itself, and you probably will have to reconfigure the deck to utilize this engine consistently.
I would think that you cut at least 1 Revelation, along with 2-3 Think Twice to run 3-4 copies of this card. If this is the gameplan going long, you're far less likely to loop Revelations and draw your entire deck, which makes you shift from Draw-Go towards Prison on the Control spectrum. All of a sudden cards that work well with locking up positional advantage without actually burying your opponent in a sudden avalanche of cards become much better. UW Control is already setup to do this with Crucible and Planeswalkers (v. creature decks), but there's no Counterbalance-style card to lock-out combo decks. Well, Runed Halo does a good impression but has so many holes in it.
One net positive of running more positional advantage permanents is that you can cut down on spot removal. I always thought 6 spells was excessive and would be glad to go back to 4 with replacements for the other 2 copies turning into something that is better in non-creature machups. Even UW Control went back down to 4, something i tried to replicate recently by using first Gideon of the Trials and then Runed Halo.
This is not a fair assessment - There are so few decks that deal less than 5 damage to themselves, and if you can manage even one or two chipshots with Snapcaster it's more like a 3-4 turn clock. Putting pressure on the opponent is "doing something" regardless of whether or not the source of pressure has an ETB effect - Pressure will force your opponent to play a reactive game when they might have wanted to play a proactive game, in either case it will cause them to change up their game plan a little.
My point was that a 3-4 turn clock dropped on turn 3 gives you a turn 6-7 kill. A combo deck that can't go off by then (through disruption, even) must have drawn terribly. You basically have to stop your opponent with [i]other[i] draws and then instead of locking them out by drawing more disruption than they can draw answers (with Revelation), you're expecting to kill your opponent before they can draw into their combo again.
The fact that you automatically pointed to damage from Snapcaster helping shorten the clock should be evidence in support of what we're all saying about "being a bad midrange list". Every successful tempo/midrange deck is running between 12-15 creatures/planeswalkers for a reason. If you're going to go below that number you gotta only play ETB value creatures like Snapcaster/Vendilion Clique.
And finally, in what world is Tasigur's draw ability worse than drawing a card by any other means possible? Its a guaranteed non-land card! That's better than generic "draw a card" by a lot.
Tasigur costs 4 mana to activate, which puts it in Azure Mage territory. His card draw is of the Browbeat style, similar to Steam Augury. You jsut give your opponent a card that can't interact, another copy of Tasigur, or a cantrip. Free is always good, but if you've got a Think Twice or Esper Charm in hand you're probably better off casting those.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/standard#online
It looks like UW Big Spells w/Azcanta is hanging on to Tier 2. UB Draw-Go w/Azcanta is currently at Tier 3 levels, with 7 decks seeing significantly more wins than it.
Gerry Thompson wrote an article for SCG on the Search in Modern:
He then goes on to talk about some of the Combo/Control and Expensive Sorcery decks that he wants to try it with. Scapseshift, Thopter-Sword, UWR Nahiri, etc.
On all fronts it's looking like Search is going to find it's niche in decks with prison pieces, planeswalkers, or other positional advantage cards.
I tried Spell Queller, but ended up going with Cliques. Queller is better in matchups where it can block 2/x creatures, but is a slower clock and rarely comes out on turn 3 unless you force it.
If he had that sequence in game 3 he would only have 1 card left in hand and 2 Snapcasters on board, right? You could have stormed off with a Gifts off the top; why concede?
I can't imagine Storm being that rough post-board with no Blood Moons. Their ability to spike you goes way down and their deck is just a slower version of their maindeck. That Caleb Scherer sideboard plan actually looks pretty bad to me. Pieces of the Puzzle in place of Gifts is just trading Divinations; waste of sideboard space. Past in Flames and Grapeshot for Empty is standard, but removing Electromancers instead of rituals makes the deck better early and worse late. UW only has 4x Path to Exile; boarding down to 4 creatures from 7 feels as if it makes the remaining Electromancers worse.
I used to board Pieces, but only to play in addition to Gifts as a 2-of. I'm hardly a Storm master, I suppose...
Storm is "the other deck" that I played in Modern. Post board you just board in Empty the Warrens and Blood Moons and cheese the Control deck in the early game. You don't need your graveyard at all, and Grapeshot is more likely to kill a Snapcaster than anything else.
I maindeck Runed Halo but would board it out against a Storm deck. Granted, I never actually realized that Gifts was targeted...I still think the cards to worry about are Empty and Blood Moon, which is part of the reason I moved to Detention Sphere in the sideboard.
If you can't lock out a deck or bury it with Revelation, you're only chance at a good matchup is going to be by boarding into a tempo plan. They can kill Vendilion Clique and Snapcasters, but those cards allow you to clock combo decks without putting yourself down a card.
Reid Duke and other pros in the tournament have talked about how the decks at Worlds are inbred.
http://sales.starcitygames.com/deckdatabase/deckshow.php?event_ID=19&t[T1]=1&start_date=2017-09-30&end_date=2017-09-30&state=TX&city=Dallas&order_1=finish&limit=8&t_num=1&action=Show+Decks
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/metagame/standard#online
Sweepers are an example of a high-impact card that causes swings in positional advantage.
You're never going to live the dream with repeatable dig spells of answering every threat your opponent plays. It's the same trap as Mystical Teachings. 3 mana to draw a card is a worse rate than Think Twice; the mana is justified by the difference in card quality between a random card and whatever you manage to find. Read: it should consistently be worth multiple cards and impact the board.
See, that's the Magical Christmas Land from where all bad Control decks originate:
"Assuming I don't draw terrible, I should only be behind by maybe a card or 2. If I just draw 2 extra cards then I should be at parity, and every Divination after than will put me further and further ahead!"
Then reality hits you realize that between answers not lining up, higher land densities, and your opponent having a 10% likelihood of the "nut draw" that you don't even have access to, you have to move mountains with a Control deck for it to be competitive. You have to build your deck to catch up, not keep up. All the torrential Gearhulk decks in standard are a perfect example; they're great except for the games where they fall behind. A single removal spell makes your turn 6 Gearhulk an expensive card draw spell that doesn't get you out of the hole you're in. They've been great for their debut weekends but never greater than Tier 2, going long.
Note that the successful Search for Azcanta deck in Standard are the UW Approach decks with 5 sweepers and 3 massive lifegain spells that literally just win 2 turns after resolving. That's exactly what I'm saying Search promotes.
Azcanta rewards positional advantage permanents. Casting Impulse each turn opens up the possibility of soft-locks, similar to what we saw with Dragonloard Ojutai in Standard. Once you untap with a planeswalkers on turn 5 and this thing flips, it becomes less likely with every passing turn that your opponent will draw out of it before the planeswalker ultimates. Same could apply to Crucible of Worlds locks. The search helps setup and protect these board states, which will shift any (successful) list over time towards this end of the spectrum. People do things like cut sweepers for Tasigur in their Draw-Go decks, so there's no saying you have to build your decks a certain way, but when there's an obvious path of least resistance a successful archetype will tend to evolve in that direction. That's assuming the deck has exposure and there are articles and tournament results available.
Azcanta disincentivises low-impact, one-for-one disruption and/or Divination effects. This isn't as intuitive, but Azcanta is highly mana-inefficient in terms of material (card) advantage. Phyrexian Arena effect exists that will give you a card for less mana each turn, and they're hardly playable cards. Similar to the way that Mystical Tutor gives you the option of a 5-mana Path to Exile, a 6-mana counterspell, or a 7-mana Divination, when you're burning 3 mana each turn on a dig effect you need the answers you're finding to have huge impacts on the board. You'll feel it when you're staring down lethal in 2 turns and you begin wondering exactly you could get off an activation that would justify sinking half your available mana each turn into.
I said spot removal, by which I meant cards which only kill creatures and are dead in most all of the spell-based matchups.
I would think that you cut at least 1 Revelation, along with 2-3 Think Twice to run 3-4 copies of this card. If this is the gameplan going long, you're far less likely to loop Revelations and draw your entire deck, which makes you shift from Draw-Go towards Prison on the Control spectrum. All of a sudden cards that work well with locking up positional advantage without actually burying your opponent in a sudden avalanche of cards become much better. UW Control is already setup to do this with Crucible and Planeswalkers (v. creature decks), but there's no Counterbalance-style card to lock-out combo decks. Well, Runed Halo does a good impression but has so many holes in it.
One net positive of running more positional advantage permanents is that you can cut down on spot removal. I always thought 6 spells was excessive and would be glad to go back to 4 with replacements for the other 2 copies turning into something that is better in non-creature machups. Even UW Control went back down to 4, something i tried to replicate recently by using first Gideon of the Trials and then Runed Halo.
The fact that you automatically pointed to damage from Snapcaster helping shorten the clock should be evidence in support of what we're all saying about "being a bad midrange list". Every successful tempo/midrange deck is running between 12-15 creatures/planeswalkers for a reason. If you're going to go below that number you gotta only play ETB value creatures like Snapcaster/Vendilion Clique.
Tasigur costs 4 mana to activate, which puts it in Azure Mage territory. His card draw is of the Browbeat style, similar to Steam Augury. You jsut give your opponent a card that can't interact, another copy of Tasigur, or a cantrip. Free is always good, but if you've got a Think Twice or Esper Charm in hand you're probably better off casting those.