Crystal Shard came up in the Cube thread in regards to Spell Queller. Seems like U/W is going to have a lot interesting paths to go down.
I'm wondering if you could take an E & T list, cut Arbiter, TKS, and temple. Play painlands, and a fetch mana base and stretch to 3.5 colorless as Queller+Displacer+Strangler+Sculler seems completely nuts if you can get the mana to work, but 3.5 colors is a big stretch.
Being just UW also seems super interesting to brew with as UW has such unexplored territory now:
Spellstutter + Eldrazi Displacer + Mutavault//
Vendillion Clique + Spirit of the Lab + Geist Reich Sanitarium //
Meddling Mage + Spell Queller + Eldrazi Displacer //
So I was looking for this guy's thread and I couldn't find it. Seems like people are sleeping on this guy.
If Delirium is on, it's a 6/11 spread across 4 bodies which can all block fliers. If this wasn't a Delirium ability, we'd all be talking about how nuts this guy is and how he's on the same level or higher than deranged hermit, cloudgoat, or the other premium token generators, but most delirium cards have fallen flat so far. The difference here is that unlike most delirium cards this one immediately stabilizes you if you had to take a weird line to turn on Delirium.
His ability is also not flavor text as late game he demands an answer as he can threaten 8 points of reach by leaving mana up (leave mana up, EOT + your next turn if they dont remove it).
I'm not sure how reliably my green decks can turn on delirium by themselves, but my G/U or G/B decks definitely don't have that problem and both would absolutely love this guy.
Welp. That's actually quite a bit better than I thought. I was thinking it was a draw-step interaction (derp). There might be something here.
I was also looking through the thread on the last page looking for some context around the discussion and came across a brief mention of epochrasite. Am I crazy here thinking it could be a legit two drop? Comes in off vial as a 4/4, is profitable against all removal thats not named path to exile (Which your TKS's already tax). If you can cast it you can blink/displacer it into a 4/4. And best of all: it's casting cost is 2 colorless -- so well it might be bad, it'll at least be in play.
I didn't consider that the first one could loot the second one away. That's actually pretty great as it lets you reliably play multiples (though I still think 2 new land +mikoro is probably better than 3 new land as looting is still a big tempo hit without spirit). Still -- I don't think Spirit is strong enough. If there is a meta where Spirit is great - then I can see supplementing it with a Draw lands package, but with Nahiri's -2 being able to exile it without it being tapped, and it being food to BGx Goyfs I don't see it. Maybe if your meta is huge on non-electrolyte Grixis decks, or storm lists?
This also isn't a format with only sorcery speed removal. The "lock" is not even close to a lock as they can just draw any instant speed spell that kills Spirit to break it up. As someone who has played the deck and been blown out on draw step Sculler/TKS flickers it happens ALOT more then you think as snap, abrupt decay, bolt, kcommand, path and a few others are the premium removal spells of the format.
I don't think Spirit of the Lab is a good card in Modern. In legacy it's more defensible because the cantrip effects are much more prevalent, and clipping a brainstorm is game over. Even then, it's not played much. The interaction with TKS will typically be "win more" and the new land, while a great combination, will take a colorless land slot away from Tec Edge/GQ/etc and being legendary means it's not going to be reliable as running 2 seems awful. (If you're set on this though 1 Mikoro, 1 New land seems better). If blue decks take off this could be a defensible build, but right now I just don't see it.
My two main issues with it are:
1)The deck/card it's strongest against -- Nahiri, can actually just -2 an exile it if you don't vial it in response to the + as it's an unfortunately an enchantment. They also have 1-2x wear/tear postboard which is a complete blowout if they hit vial+spirit or sculler+spirit.
2)It is dreadful against BGx Goyf decks -- not only does it not actually do anything, but it actively pumps goyfs after it dies if they're not on a seal of fire list.
If there was a card on a similar power level to Leonin Arbiter, but with flatter variance I think E & T would move up half a tier, but with mana issues from so many colorless sources, and Arbiter consistency issues -- I really think you need to embrace the variance until we get a New Era Mother of Runes/Stone forge low drop. Anything with a half decent ETB trigger will be insane with Displacer/Flickerwisp already being key pieces of the deck.
On the affinity front - has anyone tryed Leonin Relic Warder in the Eldrazi Taxes list? I feel like it could be very strong compared to alternatives like Disenchant, and Stony Silence shutting off your own vials, but at the same time being able to answer things at instant speed (or not have to at all with Stony) is huge against Ravager/Platings.
You missed Imperial Recruiter going from Advisor (P3K) -> Human Advisor (Judge Printing).
Fyndhorn, Llanowar, and Elves of Deep Shadow all benefit from Joraga Treespeaker, but the creature type is close enough that it works intuitively.
Can also add Sarcomancy onto the list of "Zombies Matter" cards.
Two things I learned from this post:
I need to go pickup a timeshifted Wall of Roots for that fringe Avenger of Zendikar Interaction because I never realized that was a thing.
The Dauthi Horror + Thing in the Ice interaction makes me want to cut Dauthi Horror because that just makes absolutely 0 sense and there isn't a printing of Dauthi Horror available to fix this.
Other Tribal Interactions/Creature Types to be aware of that might have something random retconned outside of typical lists:
Ophiomancer - Snake
Goblin Rabblemaster/Siege Gang Commander - Goblin
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet - Vampires
After thinking about it some more and realizing that Library of Alexandria and Volrath's Stronghold are on the reserved list and are both likely NEVER leaving the cube, I think it's unavoidable to have to explain to new players the diamond interaction. You will NEVER be able to complete a full swap so valueing consistency seems silly.
Just a heads up, the other one that used to regularly come up were Stromkirk Noble + Grim Lavamancer/Yavimaya Elder/Mother of Runes/Braids, Cabal Minion. The first 3 have newer printings that match their human oracle text while Braids is a secret human as she has not been printed with her oracle text yet (please EMA!).
I agree that clogging the 4 drop slot is a bad idea, but there's options there. Whirler Rogue + Displacer would be nuts against Affinity, Infect, fair decks. Glen Elendra and Venser would be nuts against Big Mana Decks or Combo Decks. Sower also does mean things to remova light decks.
D & T is about fine tuning your deck to the meta, and all I'm trying to say is that UW has alot of options available. Exploring those options may lead to something great!
As someone who likes to keep his cards Oracle-Text-Current for obscure corner cases (I'm looking at you Sundering Titan + Blade Splicer) and to help new players not have to ask questions about obscure wording (Alpha Disenchant "Discard", Alpha Control Magic's "Wall of Text", Mirage Mystical Tutor getting a "Mana source" etc.) I'm wondering if there is going to come a time where I need to start replacing colorless generating cards with their newer diamond generating equivalents. This hasn't been a real choice yet, but with the new Mana Crypt, Wasteland, and Mishra's Factory this is now an option. I think I'm going to stick with the old style cards for nostalgia purposes, but I'm curious what everyone would do if all of the colorless producers had appropriate diamond alternatives.
Colorless isn't really supported yet besides TKS, Smasher, Kozilek, and maybe Matter Reshaper, but with as big of a change as it was I'd be willing to bet that they offer more support for it going forward.
Keep me updated on how Disenchant is working for you. I don't think its enough, but that's entirely on theory and I would like to know how the reps actually go.
I think the U/W eldrazi list looks super interesting. I'm not sure it has a place, but one thing that came up when I was playing against fearies is that you can displacer spellstutter sprite to counter their own cards as its not an optional trigger. Ever since then I've been thinking if it's possible to build some sort of Unholy D & T/Faeries/Eldrazi Hybrid. You can leverage Mutavault as a colorless source. Spellstutter + Displacer, Mistbind+Displacer, and VClique + Displacer all seem like real things.
I'd be super interested in anyone testing a Displacer heavy version of U/W in any configuration as I think there's a sleeper deck here. You get access to Venser, Glen Elendra Archmage, Whirler Rogue to make Vials for TKS less awkward and Nimbus Maze/Sea Chrome coast should help shore up the mana.
From my experience they will beat you down with the creatures they've vomited onto the board by turn 2, sometimes they can even attach a plating to a creature aswell, what then? turn 2 stony does nothing, Sure it does work very well when they stumble too, remember they also run wear/tear which they are bringing in because of vials too, torpor orb/bloodmoon will laugh at your stony silence too, whilst you cant cast anything since you cant vial stuff in, mono white has a different game however, Disenchant has splash damage on other things too like boggles and killing a worship. Sure lantern can let you have those cards right? Smile come on remember lantern has the hand disruption and Abrupt decay early on, please try leyline against lantern/jund/bwtokens/burn/8rack.
Against affinity in an average game of magic turn 2 stony is a win 85%~ of the time. Less on the draw, but still saying it "does nothing" is hyperbolic. It won't beat nut hands on the draw, but there arn't cards that will. Torpor Orb is a 1 of at best that they might not even have. Blood Moon is a two of that they might not even have (34% on MTG goldfish have 2x bloodmoon) that also stops them from using nexi against you. Wear/Tear is uncastable against Stony without the landing a 3/60 Glimmervoid unless they float mana when you play it, and even then then its a 1-2 of at most if they have it. Bogles is barely a real deck and worship is a 1 of in kikki-chord, a deck I'm not boarding disenchant in against anyway. It's good against Blue Moon though, so if that's popular in your meta disenchant might be okay. For Lantern, the best way to beat lantern is to turn off their mill engine so you can actually see cards that do things. White Leyline accomplishes this well, and so does stony. If you're not playing stony you should be playing the white leyline and vice versa or you just don't have a card for this matchup. White Leyline against Jund is playing the is-it-in-my-opener lottery, BW tokens is barely a deck, 8 rack is barely a deck, and any competent burn player is bringing in destructive revelry to hit tidehollow sculler and aether vial against the BW version. So no, I don't think white leyline is a good card unless you live in a world where you constantly "get" people with it that don't know how to sideboard properly/don't see it coming.
I guess it is really down to the player but we are running enough creature removal in BW (since he was talking BW), its completely relevant, I want to be able to remove a plating completely, or kill bloodmoon, or make that ravager sac stuff so i can flicker wisp it off vial. Turning off the arguably the best card in the deck (Aether Vial), means you lose tempo also vs the deck which also pumps out early weak creatures.
Affinity only plays two blood moon (34% of the time according to MTGgoldfish), sometimes they have it and you don't have a basic drawn. It happens, you can play around it somewhat, but constructing your SB to heavily play around it is awful, especially when its not in a high % of lists. You can GQ or Path yourself occasionally or flickerwisp the bloodmoon off a vial. It's really not nearly as good against you as you think. On the second part, if you can ever have a vial on 3 with a flickerwisp in hand and you're not just dead on board you could probably beat affinity to death with a ham sandwich because something has gone really wrong for them. You can also just play both vial and stony silence with only minor issue postboard. In the event that you get a stony silence draw that shuts out their deck, it just mulligans you slightly... while shutting off their deck; that seems like a fine trade. If you get it after your vial is active then you've already gotten some value from vial. It is awkward if plating is already on a guy, and I wish there was a better artifact hate card in white that didn't cost 5 (fracturing gust), but there isn't.
Its so much better to have aether vial active ready to dump a displacer and flicker that attacker that has the plating, or just to ignore a ravager/ravagerstarget. Turn 2 stony is also really only good on the play, arguably that might win the game, unless they have aethergrid, then you might wish that it was disenchant :).
Stony Silence is excellent at all points in the game where a plating is not equipped to something. It is not "only good on the play" at all. You have 7-8 flicker effects which you note below to help knock plating off if you can stabilize. Aethergrid is difficult to deal with for sure if you don't see it coming, but I'd rather play a game where I have an active stony silence and they have to resort to using the grid than play a game where I don't have an active stony silence and I can remove their grid.
I've played against affinity loads and there's two things that they hate, Flying, and repeatable removal, now there's where BW does well, 8 mainboard removal spells (subject to ravager counters), 7-8 flickering affects (makes them dumping counters on stuff really not that useful), some amount of Lingering Souls or atleast access to the card (which should be in the main/side), 4 Flickerwisps which will be happy to kill their flying threats. Ghost quarters splash damage on killing their inkmoth/blinkmoths is nice.
I don't think you've played against affinity loads with this deck if you are referencing Lingering Souls as a card that the BW Eldrazi list regularly plays. The Eldrazi list is so 3 drop heavy that it has to try to play the cheapest SB cards possible and lingering souls, while great, clogs the curve. In theory most of the deck is great against affinity on a card-by-card basis; however, in reality they play their hand out faster and you die before you can stabilize. It's why affinity is a good deck. Flicker wisp does not line up well against nexus and skirges no matter how happy you think it is to trade 3 mana and a blank for 1 mana or a land drop.
One thing to consider is lantern control/tron, the only thing we need to do vs these guys is kill them before they set their lock, if you can do that, that's great, however, Ensnaring bridge is one annoying thing to get through, they now have welding jar sure for anti destruction, we also have flickerwisp but the biggest killer against them is Leyline with vial to dump hand before they deploy bridge along with our normal disruption, making them unable to target us is important for their hand disruption.
I'd play 15 Leylines if every deck in my meta was lantern, but modern is a format where you need to stretch your SB as far as it will go, and having extra game against Tron and Affinity (two Tier 1 decks) is huge.
For tron its just down to 4 questions, Do you have GC? Do you have Thalia? Do you have Leonin Arbiter? How long will it take you to kill them with the creatures you have in your HAND?
It also goes in that order imo.
GC is the most important card to have vs them if you have any form of clock, Thalia second because stopping them cantriping faster or Sylvan Scrying/mapping, also they can't lay a Karn on turn 3 if you have a Thalia, Arbiter is 3rd in priority because of the amount of cards it hits before they just out mana it in multiples its nice sure, the last priority is just seeing how long it takes to actually kill them.
Thalia hits = Their deck minus the 2-4 Wurmcoil engines, 1-2 Ulamogs and maybe they still have an emrakul.
Arbiter hits = Sylvan Scrying/Expedition map(although effectively for 1 more mana denial).
GC hits = lands makes them go back a turn on making a huge threat, combos with surgical better than it does with Arbiter.
Our deck is great against tron, but Tron is a very powerful deck and deserves more respect than just assuming Arbiter/Thalia beats them. Having an actual plan postboard is important. If you have GQ+Surgical that is a plan, but I don't see how its a good one as you end up playing surgical extraction in a color that has access to RIP which is a fine value card against Grixis, Jund, Abzan Company while being broken hate card against the GY % of the format (Goryo's/Dredge/ThopterSwordGiftsetc).
Also what to add, take stony silence and make it work make sure it wont screw you and its the same for disenchant style cards, im sure its down to player strategy...
I agree with you 100% on this, but this needs to go a bit further than player preference. If you want to do well with this deck, or any deck, your sideboarding strategies need coherent plans. I think you can build a great non-stony silence SB and a great stony silence SB, but those are entirely different 15 card packages. The debate really isn't on a card-for-card level. I really think if anyone is offering advice for SB cards they should take the whole SB (and 75) into account.
Even though Stony hits your own Vials it turns off Plating, Overseer, Ravager, Moxen, Drums and Citadels. It is worth keeping in the SB because it does SO much to them and so little to you. Stony also has game against Tron, turning off all of their stars/maps/oblivion stones and Lantern as you can just stall them with it until you hit a flickerwisp or flickerwisp+displacer. Disenchant doesn't beat welding jar+bridge, bridge+ruins, or multiple bridges. Disenchant is also awful against an oblivion stone with tron assembled.
RE: Disenchant.
Disenchant is way too slow against affinity to be a reliable sideboard card against them. It's not a bad card, but at best its a 2 mana instant-speed 1:1. The goal of any good sideboard cards against affinity is to keep up with their early game. Stony shuts off a ton of their deck while being 2CMC. It trades up in mana usage and lets you catch back up in tempo. If you want to beat affinity you need to go deeper than "artifact hate is good" and think about how the games actually play out. Gutshot trading for an overseer, plating equipped creature, shutting off a random idiot who is using springleaf drum or countering a ravager-hop out of no where can be huge for 0 tempo loss. Stony Silence shutting off Plating, overseer, ravager and a ton of their mana sources gains a huge amount of tempo and gives you time to assemble. Kataki, while not great and prone to variance, ties up their mana much more aggressively than your own. Pithing Needle can shut off Overseer/Ravager/Nexus/Plating for 1 mana. Disenchant trades 1:1 at two mana.
TL:DR If you want to beat affinity focus on your tempo. Disenchant is tempo-neutral.
1) A single cage is great against Abzan Company as it's hard for them to access hate if you have it. Overloading on cages can cause you to die to random gavony township beats while you draw dead cards so you shouldn't go too deep on them. Cage is absolutely not for Jeskai Nahiri. If you want game against Nahiri, the best options are Pithing Needle (can be reset with Flickerwisp/deal with Celestial Collonade, great against Inkmoth decks and tron), Celestial Purge (doubles as Anti Bob/Lili/Kalitas in Jund) or Hallowed Moonlight (doubles as Chord/CoCo/Graveyard Hate and combos with displacer).
2) Kataki is very awkward in tying up your mana paying for Vials/Tidehollow scullers. Against affinity Your "end game" is often getting displacer mana active as it can blank ravager tricks, unequip platings, reset overseer counters ontop of all of the combos with your own guys. Playing more Zealous Persecution, or even Gutshots would be better than Kataki, it depends on their draw, but if they have a glimmervoid/nexus heavy draw kataki can often not do enough. If you want extra % against affinity move your pontiffs to Zealous Persecution as Zealous persecutions can hit nexus and can often clip steel overseer before it activates.
3) I'm not going to comment on how to fix this one. Running the stock list against Jund seemed like a nightmare when I tried it and ultimately caused me to move away from the stock list as I couldn't reliably beat them without Arbiter screw. I don't know if there's a good solution but Smashers, Lingering Souls, Celestial Purge, and Mirran Crusader are the best cards I can think of the would qualify as "Jund Hate". If you're running Smasher heavy you might even want to board up a Sea Gate Wreckage to 23 land.
4) Worship is typically good against decks you're already good against. Any Zoo deck has issues with wasteland strangler. Any burn deck will have Destructive Revelry. Any Chord deck will have some splash hate or just go infinite regardless. The only deck I see that this is actually good against would be the new Bant Eldrazi Deck which would have issues removing it.
I'm wondering if you could take an E & T list, cut Arbiter, TKS, and temple. Play painlands, and a fetch mana base and stretch to 3.5 colorless as Queller+Displacer+Strangler+Sculler seems completely nuts if you can get the mana to work, but 3.5 colors is a big stretch.
Being just UW also seems super interesting to brew with as UW has such unexplored territory now:
Spellstutter + Eldrazi Displacer + Mutavault//
Vendillion Clique + Spirit of the Lab + Geist Reich Sanitarium //
Meddling Mage + Spell Queller + Eldrazi Displacer //
It's a good day to be a D & T brewer.
So I was looking for this guy's thread and I couldn't find it. Seems like people are sleeping on this guy.
If Delirium is on, it's a 6/11 spread across 4 bodies which can all block fliers. If this wasn't a Delirium ability, we'd all be talking about how nuts this guy is and how he's on the same level or higher than deranged hermit, cloudgoat, or the other premium token generators, but most delirium cards have fallen flat so far. The difference here is that unlike most delirium cards this one immediately stabilizes you if you had to take a weird line to turn on Delirium.
His ability is also not flavor text as late game he demands an answer as he can threaten 8 points of reach by leaving mana up (leave mana up, EOT + your next turn if they dont remove it).
I'm not sure how reliably my green decks can turn on delirium by themselves, but my G/U or G/B decks definitely don't have that problem and both would absolutely love this guy.
I was also looking through the thread on the last page looking for some context around the discussion and came across a brief mention of epochrasite. Am I crazy here thinking it could be a legit two drop? Comes in off vial as a 4/4, is profitable against all removal thats not named path to exile (Which your TKS's already tax). If you can cast it you can blink/displacer it into a 4/4. And best of all: it's casting cost is 2 colorless -- so well it might be bad, it'll at least be in play.
This also isn't a format with only sorcery speed removal. The "lock" is not even close to a lock as they can just draw any instant speed spell that kills Spirit to break it up. As someone who has played the deck and been blown out on draw step Sculler/TKS flickers it happens ALOT more then you think as snap, abrupt decay, bolt, kcommand, path and a few others are the premium removal spells of the format.
My two main issues with it are:
1)The deck/card it's strongest against -- Nahiri, can actually just -2 an exile it if you don't vial it in response to the + as it's an unfortunately an enchantment. They also have 1-2x wear/tear postboard which is a complete blowout if they hit vial+spirit or sculler+spirit.
2)It is dreadful against BGx Goyf decks -- not only does it not actually do anything, but it actively pumps goyfs after it dies if they're not on a seal of fire list.
If there was a card on a similar power level to Leonin Arbiter, but with flatter variance I think E & T would move up half a tier, but with mana issues from so many colorless sources, and Arbiter consistency issues -- I really think you need to embrace the variance until we get a New Era Mother of Runes/Stone forge low drop. Anything with a half decent ETB trigger will be insane with Displacer/Flickerwisp already being key pieces of the deck.
Fyndhorn, Llanowar, and Elves of Deep Shadow all benefit from Joraga Treespeaker, but the creature type is close enough that it works intuitively.
Can also add Sarcomancy onto the list of "Zombies Matter" cards.
Two things I learned from this post:
I need to go pickup a timeshifted Wall of Roots for that fringe Avenger of Zendikar Interaction because I never realized that was a thing.
The Dauthi Horror + Thing in the Ice interaction makes me want to cut Dauthi Horror because that just makes absolutely 0 sense and there isn't a printing of Dauthi Horror available to fix this.
Other Tribal Interactions/Creature Types to be aware of that might have something random retconned outside of typical lists:
Ophiomancer - Snake
Goblin Rabblemaster/Siege Gang Commander - Goblin
Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet - Vampires
D & T is about fine tuning your deck to the meta, and all I'm trying to say is that UW has alot of options available. Exploring those options may lead to something great!
Colorless isn't really supported yet besides TKS, Smasher, Kozilek, and maybe Matter Reshaper, but with as big of a change as it was I'd be willing to bet that they offer more support for it going forward.
I think the U/W eldrazi list looks super interesting. I'm not sure it has a place, but one thing that came up when I was playing against fearies is that you can displacer spellstutter sprite to counter their own cards as its not an optional trigger. Ever since then I've been thinking if it's possible to build some sort of Unholy D & T/Faeries/Eldrazi Hybrid. You can leverage Mutavault as a colorless source. Spellstutter + Displacer, Mistbind+Displacer, and VClique + Displacer all seem like real things.
I'd be super interested in anyone testing a Displacer heavy version of U/W in any configuration as I think there's a sleeper deck here. You get access to Venser, Glen Elendra Archmage, Whirler Rogue to make Vials for TKS less awkward and Nimbus Maze/Sea Chrome coast should help shore up the mana.
Against affinity in an average game of magic turn 2 stony is a win 85%~ of the time. Less on the draw, but still saying it "does nothing" is hyperbolic. It won't beat nut hands on the draw, but there arn't cards that will. Torpor Orb is a 1 of at best that they might not even have. Blood Moon is a two of that they might not even have (34% on MTG goldfish have 2x bloodmoon) that also stops them from using nexi against you. Wear/Tear is uncastable against Stony without the landing a 3/60 Glimmervoid unless they float mana when you play it, and even then then its a 1-2 of at most if they have it. Bogles is barely a real deck and worship is a 1 of in kikki-chord, a deck I'm not boarding disenchant in against anyway. It's good against Blue Moon though, so if that's popular in your meta disenchant might be okay. For Lantern, the best way to beat lantern is to turn off their mill engine so you can actually see cards that do things. White Leyline accomplishes this well, and so does stony. If you're not playing stony you should be playing the white leyline and vice versa or you just don't have a card for this matchup. White Leyline against Jund is playing the is-it-in-my-opener lottery, BW tokens is barely a deck, 8 rack is barely a deck, and any competent burn player is bringing in destructive revelry to hit tidehollow sculler and aether vial against the BW version. So no, I don't think white leyline is a good card unless you live in a world where you constantly "get" people with it that don't know how to sideboard properly/don't see it coming.
Affinity only plays two blood moon (34% of the time according to MTGgoldfish), sometimes they have it and you don't have a basic drawn. It happens, you can play around it somewhat, but constructing your SB to heavily play around it is awful, especially when its not in a high % of lists. You can GQ or Path yourself occasionally or flickerwisp the bloodmoon off a vial. It's really not nearly as good against you as you think. On the second part, if you can ever have a vial on 3 with a flickerwisp in hand and you're not just dead on board you could probably beat affinity to death with a ham sandwich because something has gone really wrong for them. You can also just play both vial and stony silence with only minor issue postboard. In the event that you get a stony silence draw that shuts out their deck, it just mulligans you slightly... while shutting off their deck; that seems like a fine trade. If you get it after your vial is active then you've already gotten some value from vial. It is awkward if plating is already on a guy, and I wish there was a better artifact hate card in white that didn't cost 5 (fracturing gust), but there isn't.
Stony Silence is excellent at all points in the game where a plating is not equipped to something. It is not "only good on the play" at all. You have 7-8 flicker effects which you note below to help knock plating off if you can stabilize. Aethergrid is difficult to deal with for sure if you don't see it coming, but I'd rather play a game where I have an active stony silence and they have to resort to using the grid than play a game where I don't have an active stony silence and I can remove their grid.
I don't think you've played against affinity loads with this deck if you are referencing Lingering Souls as a card that the BW Eldrazi list regularly plays. The Eldrazi list is so 3 drop heavy that it has to try to play the cheapest SB cards possible and lingering souls, while great, clogs the curve. In theory most of the deck is great against affinity on a card-by-card basis; however, in reality they play their hand out faster and you die before you can stabilize. It's why affinity is a good deck. Flicker wisp does not line up well against nexus and skirges no matter how happy you think it is to trade 3 mana and a blank for 1 mana or a land drop.
I'd play 15 Leylines if every deck in my meta was lantern, but modern is a format where you need to stretch your SB as far as it will go, and having extra game against Tron and Affinity (two Tier 1 decks) is huge.
Our deck is great against tron, but Tron is a very powerful deck and deserves more respect than just assuming Arbiter/Thalia beats them. Having an actual plan postboard is important. If you have GQ+Surgical that is a plan, but I don't see how its a good one as you end up playing surgical extraction in a color that has access to RIP which is a fine value card against Grixis, Jund, Abzan Company while being broken hate card against the GY % of the format (Goryo's/Dredge/ThopterSwordGiftsetc).
I agree with you 100% on this, but this needs to go a bit further than player preference. If you want to do well with this deck, or any deck, your sideboarding strategies need coherent plans. I think you can build a great non-stony silence SB and a great stony silence SB, but those are entirely different 15 card packages. The debate really isn't on a card-for-card level. I really think if anyone is offering advice for SB cards they should take the whole SB (and 75) into account.
RE: Disenchant.
Disenchant is way too slow against affinity to be a reliable sideboard card against them. It's not a bad card, but at best its a 2 mana instant-speed 1:1. The goal of any good sideboard cards against affinity is to keep up with their early game. Stony shuts off a ton of their deck while being 2CMC. It trades up in mana usage and lets you catch back up in tempo. If you want to beat affinity you need to go deeper than "artifact hate is good" and think about how the games actually play out. Gutshot trading for an overseer, plating equipped creature, shutting off a random idiot who is using springleaf drum or countering a ravager-hop out of no where can be huge for 0 tempo loss. Stony Silence shutting off Plating, overseer, ravager and a ton of their mana sources gains a huge amount of tempo and gives you time to assemble. Kataki, while not great and prone to variance, ties up their mana much more aggressively than your own. Pithing Needle can shut off Overseer/Ravager/Nexus/Plating for 1 mana. Disenchant trades 1:1 at two mana.
TL:DR If you want to beat affinity focus on your tempo. Disenchant is tempo-neutral.
2) Kataki is very awkward in tying up your mana paying for Vials/Tidehollow scullers. Against affinity Your "end game" is often getting displacer mana active as it can blank ravager tricks, unequip platings, reset overseer counters ontop of all of the combos with your own guys. Playing more Zealous Persecution, or even Gutshots would be better than Kataki, it depends on their draw, but if they have a glimmervoid/nexus heavy draw kataki can often not do enough. If you want extra % against affinity move your pontiffs to Zealous Persecution as Zealous persecutions can hit nexus and can often clip steel overseer before it activates.
3) I'm not going to comment on how to fix this one. Running the stock list against Jund seemed like a nightmare when I tried it and ultimately caused me to move away from the stock list as I couldn't reliably beat them without Arbiter screw. I don't know if there's a good solution but Smashers, Lingering Souls, Celestial Purge, and Mirran Crusader are the best cards I can think of the would qualify as "Jund Hate". If you're running Smasher heavy you might even want to board up a Sea Gate Wreckage to 23 land.
4) Worship is typically good against decks you're already good against. Any Zoo deck has issues with wasteland strangler. Any burn deck will have Destructive Revelry. Any Chord deck will have some splash hate or just go infinite regardless. The only deck I see that this is actually good against would be the new Bant Eldrazi Deck which would have issues removing it.