1) Why so many lands? Are you compensating for Vault and Quarter? Otherwise I think 21-22 should be enough.
Moreover, Tarpit seems really good - is there a specific reason you only play 2 of them?
2) I wouldn't cut all Slaughter Pacts. They are just too strong, especially with Snapcaster Mage.
3) What about your sideboard? Has it worked out so far? Which choices do you consider important/exchangeable?
As I explained, I found 22 lands very risky and even wanted to go up to
24. This deck only hits its stride at 3 lands, and with so few card selection spells you frequently won't hit your drops. I tested the original list with 4 Tar Pits for about a week before quickly cutting to 2. It's hard enough to hit your timely land drops and dying to Moon, making it worse with a CITP land exacerbates many problems with the deck.
Pacts have been a huge burden in my games as of late. I played them for about 1.5 months, so I know how awesome it feels with Snaps and Mentors. The problem is, it's a 3 mana removal spell and it can't kill Tasigurs and Anglers. Yes you may pay 0 mana now, but the 3 mana you pay later frequently is a huge tempo loss.
The sideboard has been fine. I consider the Snare, Dispel, Canonist, Go for the Throat as somewhat flexible slots, the rest are almost uncuttable.
I played Esper Midrange (Mentor) to a 7-1 finish (only loss was in an early round against Twin where I mulled to 5 in all 3 games, more on this later ) winning a GPT with this list.
My experiences with the deck:
I tested this deck extensively on MTGO dailies. Went 3-1 several times.
Twin felt like a positive matchup, my win rate against Twin in sanctioned events is 70% with the list. Many times, your Lingering Souls will carry you to victory in grindy matchups, and will bait Bolts and Terminates! Then eventually your Mentor will land. Similarly for Grixis Delve(r).
Bad matchups are basically creature swarm strategies like Merfolk, Soul Sisters and Zoo. Affinity is fine though due to Lingering Souls and Affinity.
Tron felt slightly unfavorable, but still ok. I've surprisingly beaten Amulet many times in sanctioned matches too, having about a 55% win rate.
Some reasons behind the changes I made to the other lists you see:
22 lands is very greedy in this deck and 23 feels barely passable. I would have loved to play 24, but couldn't find a way to make it work. That single Ghost Quarter won me a lot of games which would otherwise be unwinnable.
4 Thought Scours felt very clunky to me, and I subbed one out for Thirst for Knowledge. Frequently, your discard spells end up stuck in hand late game and being able to draw 3 and ditch them mid-late game to fuel Delve won me many games, especially post board. Compulsive Research was considered, but this being instant speed is a big deal. It also has a strange effect on opponents as they have no idea if you are on Gifts or some kind of artifact deck as the deck is still under the radar and sometimes board incorrectly.
Like many others I used to play Slaughter Pact maindeck but with the meta the way it is now, I grew increasingly uncomfortable playing this very conditional kill spell that can't kill Tasigurs, Anglers, Bobs, etc. Zealous Persecutions maindeck however has consistently over performed, as either a killer board wipe against Affinity, Infect or even Company and Elves, or as a mega pump spell for your Monks. Zealous Persecution also has a side effect of being a protection spell against Pyroclasms for your Monks.
The counterspells were the most adjustable from week to week. The week I played the GPT was when Blood Moon was in season, even maindeck, so I moved away from my usual Logic Knot maindeck. The 2 main Negates look really strange, but it didn't seem that bad - every single deck in the meta now has something for you to Negate. It also frees up your sideboard.
The deck is quite soft to Blood Moon. Most of my losses to Twin for example are due to them slamming a top decked moon with me drawing non of my fetchlands and with no negate. Thus the 10 fetchlands instead of the usual 8-9.
I didn't like the usual Finks in the sideboard. In many matchups, I'm boarding in Finks against decks that will also pack Moon, and I found myself stuck between strange decisions on whether to fetch to play around Moon, or to fetch to cast a Finks.
Major weaknesses of the deck and my overall experiences:
You are at a huge mercy of your hands. This deck does not mulligan well. Many times you will be stuck on mana in one way or another and there's very little you can do about it. Tasigur is by far the most skill testing card in the deck and deciding what to delve away and when to activate it will make or break many games. Be very patient with your Mentors. The opening to land it will present itself.
Due to not having room to play things like Anticipate/Visions, you will have many games where your answers are mismatched to the threats. My feeling is that this deck presents a great fight against Tier 1 decks, but has a strange weakness to tier 2 decks. In previous GPTs, I felt like my tournament was going well until I made my first loss, then dropping to the lower brackets where the tier 2 decks live.
Moving forward though, I'm not sure if I'm continuing with this deck. This deck seems subject to variance more than many other fair decks, but unlike combo decks which at least have a explosive win if it hits it's killer hands, even with your killer hands, you are still in for a grind. Many matches against Twin for example, although it felt positive, it was always a long long grind and always came close to time. Mentor itself felt really awesome when it goes off, but for the amount of work you need to do to setup sometimes, I could have similarly defended almost any other creature, so it's not entirely obvious to me now after playing the deck for the past few months that Mentor is an irreplaceable card.
We arent set by any standard, but it is usually either separated into colors and then distributed "relatively" evenly in each pack, or I'll separate commons and uncommons from the rares first and then do the distribution evenly by color.
That sounds good. It came up in the draft yesterday, the imbalance of colors in packs. Surprisingly, we never really ran into this problem in regular cube drafts, but in set cubes somehow this becomes a bigger issue. I've had too many packs where I had literally zero picks because they simply weren't in my colors.
I host a regular draft group of 8-10 players, we call it Cubesday.
I own about 7 different cubes, most of which have are block cubes.
Really neat! How do you guys usually draft the cubes? Do you form packs using the 10/3/1 retail split or just shuffle the entire cube and deal out random packs?
I have made a Khans of Tarkir cube with a 3c/2uc/1r/1m ratio, but tweaking the common dual lands to 4 each, cutting useless (in Limited) cards like Shatter, Ugin's Nexus, Lens of Clarity, etc.
Played sealed with my nephew over the holidays a few times and it was a blast. For a long time I've been trying to find a format where I can play with children without feeling bored (note: Duel Decks are horrible to play with children), and this seems to be it.
Off topic: As for the KTK limited environment itself, WoTC really did a fantastic job here. I'm in the MTGO beta for Leagues and i've built 30+ KTK sealed decks and i've not been bored. I found myself staying awake at 2 a.m, going, "just one more match to crack my next booster for my league deck". Dare I say it? It's my favorite MTG format now, KTK league, bar none (and I play almost everything, Vintage/Legacy/Modern/EDH/Standard/Pauper).
EDIT: Just drafted this for the first time at an LGS with 4 others and it was a blast! I think increasing the number of the duals was a right move, even with that increase it was still difficult to get all the fixing you need so the tension between picking a spell or a land is still there.
Tested an hour against (Tarmo) Twin yesterday and Dismember is vital to beating that matchup too. Many times, in order to progress your board state, Dismember ends up being your only out against Twin. Remand, Repeal, Condescend can often times be too expensive. You can leave up mana to cast those spells, but then you'll be doing too little and will die from the beatdown plan.
There seems to be a lot of new tech that can be tried in a more aggro-ish version of UR Tron that still retains the late game madness that all Tron decks have. Ensoul Artifact, Shrapnel Blast and Scuttling Doom Engine can make for an aggro build, that can also use the same cards to protect itself. Ensoul blocks Goyfs, Blast deals with problematic creatures. Connect with the Doom Engine once, then Shrapnel Blast it to deal 17 damage. Thoughts?
@Heretix or Sasky
You do realize we have mirran crusader for green and black creature with double strike and with 1WW cc (better than BSA that 3WW cc) ?
I Love BSA as creature and her abilites but I still disagree with her cc that is 3WW. It's make DnT a LongGame deck not a midgame deck
Well any argue is open
That's been my findings with D&T though, that the games with D&T frequently goes long even with the aggro builds. As mentioned in my writeup, a "wall" like Smiter or a simple Goyf appears and suddenly the game stalls. Do you swing with the Mirran and try to race them? They'll smash in for 4 minimum, but probably for 5 as they have Noble Hierarchs too. Against decks like Affinity, the taxes don't work and we generally can't race them.
But land a Baneslayer and the whole thing changes. Suddenly, they can't swing at all. Affinity's flyers will die to the BSA even with Cranial Plating on, unless they have the double-black to reattach.
I know BSA may seem strange in this deck on a theoretical level, especially since it can't ramp, but in my test games for about a 1-2 months now, it has worked. I hope you guys will give this deck a whirl and see how it works, so we may work on this midrange version of D&T together.
how are people feeling about Spirit of the Labyrinth? too fragile? too narrow? i know people are testing it in legacy for brainstorm/JtMS hate..... i think it might be relevant against decks like heartbeat combo or storm or anything relying too hard on cantrips, also poops on horizon canopy but that seems kinda fringe. im considering trying it because i opened a few and was wondering what the general consensus was rather than just try to cram n jam him
I tested Sprit of the Labyrinth for awhile, and found it lackluster. The stats are incredible, a 2 mana 3/1 with text is so good. But unfortunately, it's too narrow a card in Modern, unlike in Legacy.
Here are the cards it affects in the Modern meta, off the top of my head:
Faithless Looting
Griselbrand
Izzet Charm (using the loot mode)
Serum Visions
Gitaxian Probe
Manamorphose
Ninja of the Deep Hours
Against the decks which it matters (Storm, Goryo's, Ninja Bear Delver), it is stellar. But these decks are way too uncommonly played to deserve even 1 slot in the sideboard when there are far more commonly played decks which deserve that slot. Note that Spirit doesn't stop cards that simply reveal off the top of the library like Ad Nauseum or the Cascade spells of Living End.
Unless Goryo's, Storm or even Ninja Bear Delver is a commonly played deck in your meta, I wouldn't play Spirit.
Derp, yep, forgot that one! On the other hand, UWR Geist is kinda the preferred UWR build these days and they don't run Sphinx's Revelation at all. UWR Control runs it.
how are people feeling about Spirit of the Labyrinth? too fragile? too narrow? i know people are testing it in legacy for brainstorm/JtMS hate..... i think it might be relevant against decks like heartbeat combo or storm or anything relying too hard on cantrips, also poops on horizon canopy but that seems kinda fringe. im considering trying it because i opened a few and was wondering what the general consensus was rather than just try to cram n jam him
I tested Sprit of the Labyrinth for awhile, and found it lackluster. The stats are incredible, a 2 mana 3/1 with text is so good. But unfortunately, it's too narrow a card in Modern, unlike in Legacy.
Here are the cards it affects in the Modern meta, off the top of my head:
Faithless Looting
Griselbrand
Izzet Charm (using the loot mode)
Serum Visions
Gitaxian Probe
Manamorphose
Ninja of the Deep Hours
Against the decks which it matters (Storm, Goryo's, Ninja Bear Delver), it is stellar. But these decks are way too uncommonly played to deserve even 1 slot in the sideboard when there are far more commonly played decks which deserve that slot. Note that Spirit doesn't stop cards that simply reveal off the top of the library like Ad Nauseum or the Cascade spells of Living End.
Unless Goryo's, Storm or even Ninja Bear Delver is a commonly played deck in your meta, I wouldn't play Spirit.
kataki tax yourself a lot. I know it because I have tested it, and I don't like to pay for my golems and vials.
Good point, but it's only in against Affinity and is effectively a 2 mana board wipe against them. I can't think of any other matchup where Kataki goes in.
I have tested Ethersworn Canonist, it's quite good against blue decks in general. If they are reduced to only one burn or counterspell per turn, it is very easy to play around them. It is of course great against Storm and Goryo's Vengeance if that's in your meta. But I think 2 is too much.
I totally agree regarding having protection against Firespout and gang. My choice for now is Brave the Elements. For the builds that splash red, the obvious pick is Boros Charm.
Yay cool, since there's demand for my updated primer I will message a mod to have it on the front page. I'll then update it to reflect the latest changes to the meta, new cards, etc.
1. The main reason I've got Firespout is because I don't actually own any Anger of the Gods and there's no way I'm going to be able to get them in time, although I agree that Anger is a pure beating against Pod. Scapeshift in general is really good against Pod though so I'm not too worried. I also dislike the thought of double red just because it's usually more important to set up double green and even double blue first, but I can see how it probably wouldn't be a problem with all the ramp.
Anger is a $2 card that's not even widely played in Standard, surely the shop that is hosting the GPT has them? You never need to set up double-green that early unless you're playing around Blood Moon. You can't cast Prime Time or Scapeshift till later anyway, and by then, you will have had to find or lay down more lands.
You aren't playing Cryptic Command, why do you need so much blue for?
2. I agree Baloth is good but when I had 4 I always had problems figuring out cards to take out to get in all of them. He's fantastic against Zoo though so maybe I'll axe the Sowing Salt for the 4th Baloth. I've seen the lists that run 2 maindeck but I'm not really a fan since it's more of a reactive card that's completely worthless in a lot of matchups. Game one I just want to go all in on my combo plan.
A rule of thumb is this: against any deck that runs Thoughtseize/Inquisition, cut all the counterspells. You will frequently be in a top-deck war, so you can put in all 4 Baloths easily.
Baloth is not really a reactive card, it's a proactive card that will draw either counterspells or removal. There are many matchups where its relevant, Pod (don't forget, they can easily beat you with just Finks, Voice and Smiters beating you turn after turn without going off, and post-board will Thoughtseize you to take away your win conditions), Jund, UWR (that 4 life gain is huge against them and blocks their Geists, Snapcasters), Zoo, Gruul Aggro, Burn (!!!)... how is this a worthless card? That's a lot of the tier 1 meta right there.
3. I do like Destructive Revelry as a sideboard card, not entirely sure what I'd cut to fit them in though. My gut says Relic of Progenitus but then I'm afraid of getting blownout by some graveyard schenanigans like Living End or Dredgevine or Tin Fists or whatever. What decks run Blood Moon in the sideboard besides Twin and Burn? Blood Moon from twin could be a problem but against burn you can just bring in baloths and use those + titan to beat them down.
Relic is a must in the board, you are totally right that this deck is weak against graveyard-based decks, you can probably cut 1 Ancient Grudge for the Revelry. Beating down against Twin using Baloths and Titan isn't a really good plan, they can combo off anytime under Blood Moon - you're the one that can't combo off any more. Affinity plays Blood Moon too, don't forget about their 5-color sideboard. I've also seen Blood Moon coming out from UR Delver, Zoo and Naya Aggro.
As I explained, I found 22 lands very risky and even wanted to go up to
24. This deck only hits its stride at 3 lands, and with so few card selection spells you frequently won't hit your drops. I tested the original list with 4 Tar Pits for about a week before quickly cutting to 2. It's hard enough to hit your timely land drops and dying to Moon, making it worse with a CITP land exacerbates many problems with the deck.
Pacts have been a huge burden in my games as of late. I played them for about 1.5 months, so I know how awesome it feels with Snaps and Mentors. The problem is, it's a 3 mana removal spell and it can't kill Tasigurs and Anglers. Yes you may pay 0 mana now, but the 3 mana you pay later frequently is a huge tempo loss.
The sideboard has been fine. I consider the Snare, Dispel, Canonist, Go for the Throat as somewhat flexible slots, the rest are almost uncuttable.
4 Monastery Mentor
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Thoughtseize
3 Thought Scour
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
4 Path to Exile
2 Negate
2 Remand
2 Zealous Persecution
1 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Lingering Souls
1 Sorin, Solemn Visitor
2 Murderous Cut
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Godless Shrine
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Vault of the Archangel
2 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Island
2 Marsh Flats
2 Watery Grave
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
1 Dispel
1 Spell Snare
1 Celestial Purge
1 Disenchant
1 Ethersworn Canonist
1 Flashfreeze
1 Go for the Throat
2 Stony Silence
1 Aven Mindcensor
2 Timely Reinforcements
2 Supreme Verdict
My experiences with the deck:
I tested this deck extensively on MTGO dailies. Went 3-1 several times.
Twin felt like a positive matchup, my win rate against Twin in sanctioned events is 70% with the list. Many times, your Lingering Souls will carry you to victory in grindy matchups, and will bait Bolts and Terminates! Then eventually your Mentor will land. Similarly for Grixis Delve(r).
Bad matchups are basically creature swarm strategies like Merfolk, Soul Sisters and Zoo. Affinity is fine though due to Lingering Souls and Affinity.
Tron felt slightly unfavorable, but still ok. I've surprisingly beaten Amulet many times in sanctioned matches too, having about a 55% win rate.
Some reasons behind the changes I made to the other lists you see:
22 lands is very greedy in this deck and 23 feels barely passable. I would have loved to play 24, but couldn't find a way to make it work. That single Ghost Quarter won me a lot of games which would otherwise be unwinnable.
4 Thought Scours felt very clunky to me, and I subbed one out for Thirst for Knowledge. Frequently, your discard spells end up stuck in hand late game and being able to draw 3 and ditch them mid-late game to fuel Delve won me many games, especially post board. Compulsive Research was considered, but this being instant speed is a big deal. It also has a strange effect on opponents as they have no idea if you are on Gifts or some kind of artifact deck as the deck is still under the radar and sometimes board incorrectly.
Like many others I used to play Slaughter Pact maindeck but with the meta the way it is now, I grew increasingly uncomfortable playing this very conditional kill spell that can't kill Tasigurs, Anglers, Bobs, etc. Zealous Persecutions maindeck however has consistently over performed, as either a killer board wipe against Affinity, Infect or even Company and Elves, or as a mega pump spell for your Monks. Zealous Persecution also has a side effect of being a protection spell against Pyroclasms for your Monks.
The counterspells were the most adjustable from week to week. The week I played the GPT was when Blood Moon was in season, even maindeck, so I moved away from my usual Logic Knot maindeck. The 2 main Negates look really strange, but it didn't seem that bad - every single deck in the meta now has something for you to Negate. It also frees up your sideboard.
The deck is quite soft to Blood Moon. Most of my losses to Twin for example are due to them slamming a top decked moon with me drawing non of my fetchlands and with no negate. Thus the 10 fetchlands instead of the usual 8-9.
I didn't like the usual Finks in the sideboard. In many matchups, I'm boarding in Finks against decks that will also pack Moon, and I found myself stuck between strange decisions on whether to fetch to play around Moon, or to fetch to cast a Finks.
Major weaknesses of the deck and my overall experiences:
You are at a huge mercy of your hands. This deck does not mulligan well. Many times you will be stuck on mana in one way or another and there's very little you can do about it. Tasigur is by far the most skill testing card in the deck and deciding what to delve away and when to activate it will make or break many games. Be very patient with your Mentors. The opening to land it will present itself.
Due to not having room to play things like Anticipate/Visions, you will have many games where your answers are mismatched to the threats. My feeling is that this deck presents a great fight against Tier 1 decks, but has a strange weakness to tier 2 decks. In previous GPTs, I felt like my tournament was going well until I made my first loss, then dropping to the lower brackets where the tier 2 decks live.
Moving forward though, I'm not sure if I'm continuing with this deck. This deck seems subject to variance more than many other fair decks, but unlike combo decks which at least have a explosive win if it hits it's killer hands, even with your killer hands, you are still in for a grind. Many matches against Twin for example, although it felt positive, it was always a long long grind and always came close to time. Mentor itself felt really awesome when it goes off, but for the amount of work you need to do to setup sometimes, I could have similarly defended almost any other creature, so it's not entirely obvious to me now after playing the deck for the past few months that Mentor is an irreplaceable card.
That sounds good. It came up in the draft yesterday, the imbalance of colors in packs. Surprisingly, we never really ran into this problem in regular cube drafts, but in set cubes somehow this becomes a bigger issue. I've had too many packs where I had literally zero picks because they simply weren't in my colors.
Really neat! How do you guys usually draft the cubes? Do you form packs using the 10/3/1 retail split or just shuffle the entire cube and deal out random packs?
Played sealed with my nephew over the holidays a few times and it was a blast. For a long time I've been trying to find a format where I can play with children without feeling bored (note: Duel Decks are horrible to play with children), and this seems to be it.
Off topic: As for the KTK limited environment itself, WoTC really did a fantastic job here. I'm in the MTGO beta for Leagues and i've built 30+ KTK sealed decks and i've not been bored. I found myself staying awake at 2 a.m, going, "just one more match to crack my next booster for my league deck". Dare I say it? It's my favorite MTG format now, KTK league, bar none (and I play almost everything, Vintage/Legacy/Modern/EDH/Standard/Pauper).
EDIT: Just drafted this for the first time at an LGS with 4 others and it was a blast! I think increasing the number of the duals was a right move, even with that increase it was still difficult to get all the fixing you need so the tension between picking a spell or a land is still there.
This is his list, updated with the upcoming Onslaught fetch reprints.
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Knight of the Reliquary
3 Vendilion Clique
3 Glen Elendra Archmage
4 Baneslayer Angel
3 Mana Leak
3 Remand
2 Sword of Fire and Ice
2 Cryptic Command
3 Breeding Pool
2 Celestial Colonnade
1 Flooded Strand
2 Forest
1 Gavony Township
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Hallowed Fountain
4 Misty Rainforest
1 Sejiri Steppe
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Temple Garden
1 Vesuva
4 Windswept Heath
2 Seal of Primordium
2 Spellskite
1 Stony Silence
1 Torpor Orb
1 Sword of Light and Shadow
2 Creeping Corrosion
1 Linvala, Keeper of Silence
2 Obstinate Baloth
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
1 Gideon Jura
Note the lack of Path to Exiles in the deck, just like the old Standard lists.
That's been my findings with D&T though, that the games with D&T frequently goes long even with the aggro builds. As mentioned in my writeup, a "wall" like Smiter or a simple Goyf appears and suddenly the game stalls. Do you swing with the Mirran and try to race them? They'll smash in for 4 minimum, but probably for 5 as they have Noble Hierarchs too. Against decks like Affinity, the taxes don't work and we generally can't race them.
But land a Baneslayer and the whole thing changes. Suddenly, they can't swing at all. Affinity's flyers will die to the BSA even with Cranial Plating on, unless they have the double-black to reattach.
I know BSA may seem strange in this deck on a theoretical level, especially since it can't ramp, but in my test games for about a 1-2 months now, it has worked. I hope you guys will give this deck a whirl and see how it works, so we may work on this midrange version of D&T together.
Derp, yep, forgot that one! On the other hand, UWR Geist is kinda the preferred UWR build these days and they don't run Sphinx's Revelation at all. UWR Control runs it.
I tested Sprit of the Labyrinth for awhile, and found it lackluster. The stats are incredible, a 2 mana 3/1 with text is so good. But unfortunately, it's too narrow a card in Modern, unlike in Legacy.
Here are the cards it affects in the Modern meta, off the top of my head:
Faithless Looting
Griselbrand
Izzet Charm (using the loot mode)
Serum Visions
Gitaxian Probe
Manamorphose
Ninja of the Deep Hours
Against the decks which it matters (Storm, Goryo's, Ninja Bear Delver), it is stellar. But these decks are way too uncommonly played to deserve even 1 slot in the sideboard when there are far more commonly played decks which deserve that slot. Note that Spirit doesn't stop cards that simply reveal off the top of the library like Ad Nauseum or the Cascade spells of Living End.
Unless Goryo's, Storm or even Ninja Bear Delver is a commonly played deck in your meta, I wouldn't play Spirit.
Good point, but it's only in against Affinity and is effectively a 2 mana board wipe against them. I can't think of any other matchup where Kataki goes in.
I have tested Ethersworn Canonist, it's quite good against blue decks in general. If they are reduced to only one burn or counterspell per turn, it is very easy to play around them. It is of course great against Storm and Goryo's Vengeance if that's in your meta. But I think 2 is too much.
I totally agree regarding having protection against Firespout and gang. My choice for now is Brave the Elements. For the builds that splash red, the obvious pick is Boros Charm.
Anger is a $2 card that's not even widely played in Standard, surely the shop that is hosting the GPT has them? You never need to set up double-green that early unless you're playing around Blood Moon. You can't cast Prime Time or Scapeshift till later anyway, and by then, you will have had to find or lay down more lands.
You aren't playing Cryptic Command, why do you need so much blue for?
A rule of thumb is this: against any deck that runs Thoughtseize/Inquisition, cut all the counterspells. You will frequently be in a top-deck war, so you can put in all 4 Baloths easily.
Baloth is not really a reactive card, it's a proactive card that will draw either counterspells or removal. There are many matchups where its relevant, Pod (don't forget, they can easily beat you with just Finks, Voice and Smiters beating you turn after turn without going off, and post-board will Thoughtseize you to take away your win conditions), Jund, UWR (that 4 life gain is huge against them and blocks their Geists, Snapcasters), Zoo, Gruul Aggro, Burn (!!!)... how is this a worthless card? That's a lot of the tier 1 meta right there.
Relic is a must in the board, you are totally right that this deck is weak against graveyard-based decks, you can probably cut 1 Ancient Grudge for the Revelry. Beating down against Twin using Baloths and Titan isn't a really good plan, they can combo off anytime under Blood Moon - you're the one that can't combo off any more. Affinity plays Blood Moon too, don't forget about their 5-color sideboard. I've also seen Blood Moon coming out from UR Delver, Zoo and Naya Aggro.