Played this last night, had some success. Didn't change my board even thought I had 3 additional 4 drops which was a mistake imo, even if having such a big top end helped me out against all the Jace decks.
Grim Flayer over performed a lot. Breaking though X/1 blockers and still killing Jace is really nice. He can run with game if you get him through on Turn 2 as well, sets up BBE nicely and helps Dark Confidant randomly kill you out of nowhere. (We have all had the ol' Flip 4 drop into 3 drop into 4 drop before. I split him and Confidant 3/3 so I could get a better feel for Flayer and I think he is fantastic.
Bolt is good, but I don't know if dropping to 2 Pushes is right. Yeah push is lackluster against Jace but its still so good against Goyf and so many other cards. Maybe adding more of other unconditional removal back will help.
I missed Abrupt Decay in the main a lot as well. Its not the greatest right now but it's almost never dead.
1 Dreadbore over a Terminate felt fine. Gives us one more answer to Jace and hits other stuff like Karn/Ugin. Might be better as Pulse #2.
Not sure how I feel about 2 KCommand main, 1 might be right.
All in all I think I could go
+1 Terminate / -1 K Command
+1 Abrupt Decay / -1 Scavenging Ooze
+1 Dark Confidant / -1 Grim Flayer
MAYBE +1 Fatal Push / -1 Lightning Bolt
Anyone else have any experience with Glory-Bound Initiate? He's been solid so far. The deck has been surprisingly strong considering I kinda threw it together on a whim. Seems to be at least playable, but then again, a pile of removal and efficient creatures can only be so bad. With the Initiate I feel okay supporting 2 Painful Truths in the main alongside Confidant for a wild ride of card advantage. Slayers' Stronghold was initially just a joke to see if I could start swinging with a 6/4 Vigilant Initiate. After playing with it, its kinda grown on me. It turns Initiates into overdrive and has won me a game or two i had no business winning. It even lets me play "build-your-own-bloodbraid-elf" with lategame Abbots. It still may be worse than a Ghost Quarter but I'm willing to sacrifice power for I felt like i'd share the list. Izzet Staticaster makes very ver sad
Hey guys, I've been following the thread for a little while now. I finally made the decision to start piecing together Monkey Grow! Its a deck I've always wanted to play, but never could because of Goyf + Misty + Tarn. Finally able to pickup those cards now so I'm all too excite to play the deck. I currently play various flavors of Esper Control, but decided I wanted to play good ol' Delver again0! Also being able to win games in under 45 minutes is also a point of appeal. Just picked up the few things I was missing and now I'm just waiting for a good deal on some Goyfs and Zen fetches!
I think one of the strengths of Esper Control is that we typically don't play many creatures, so removal is often dead or in the case of Secure the Wastes/WSZ, horribly inefficient. The more creatures you add the more you turn on your opponents removal. also Tapping out on turn 5 for your opponent to Path it and then slam a Nahiri seems like a shaky plan. If you creature base is 2-3 Baneslayers you can bet there will be a flurry of removal spells pointing at it when it drops. Not saying that it isn't possible, just that it typically plays out lackluster in practice.
Out of curiosity, what do you typically board In/Out against GBx. 4 Baneslayers is certainly spicy (might have to try it at some point), but Verdict and Cryptic are certainly strong cards in this matchup, and having that many high CMC spells worries me a bit.
Played for quite a while today on MTGO with the following. I'm really enjoying Dimir Charm more than I would have guessed at first. Off the top of my head in 10 matches, I countered 2 Primal Commands, Thoughtseize, Eldritch Evolution, sniped 2 Dark Confidants, a Serra Avenger in response to a Martyr activation, a Scavenging Ooze, a Thalia and used its 3rd mode to ensure I hit my fourth land against elves for Verdict. Honestly the one of has just been gas 90% of the time. I played with 2 a couple weeks back since we have a lot of Burn, Affinity and Tribal decks running around, but I think 1 feels just right.
Been testing out Spellbomb over RiP. We want to utilize the graveyard so much between Think Twice, Souls, Snapcaster and Logic Knot. Ideally you side out some of those cards and RiP hurts your opponent more than it hurts you, but running Spellbomb let's us bring it in against decks like Grixis without hurting our deck. I may switch back to RiP, but only time will tell.
Also I cut down to 3 Charms for a PPTQ, and made it to Top 4. After the dirty things I did to people today online with Esper Charm however, I can't justify NOT running the full set. One game my opponent cast a Tooth and Nail to drop two huge fatties from his hand, but only had two in hand. He conceded quickly after I fired off the Esper Charm in mind rot mode
Just picking everyone's brains here... What sorceries do we care about countering? I might try a miser's copy of Dimir Charm tonight in the main. For a while I've wanted something that kills dorks or other small-ish creatures that it feels bad to path. Off the top of my head...
Snapcaster
Dark Confidant
Steel Overseer
Thalia
Kiki-Jiki
Voice of Resurgence
Merfolk
Birds of Paradise
Noble Heirarch
Spellskite
Eidolon
Disfigure is always an option, but maybe the versatility is worth the extra mana? Maybe not. I'm willing to give it a shot.
Sorceries that come to mind...
Inquisition
Thoughtseize
Lava Spike
Crumble to Dust
Maelstrom Pulse
Sylvan Scrying
Eldritch Evolution
Traverse
unfortunately at Competitive REL, not declaring the trigger, or failing to show your knowledge of the trigger by placing a token on it is grounds for "missing" the trigger. It really sucks that you sometimes have to play like that, but it pays to be careful. Not trying to defend the guy calling that, but you have to cover yourself from angle shooters. See "Pithing Needle Borborygmos?".
Story from my first GP While I played Grixis Delver. I cast a spell, followed by opponent casting a Snapcaster which I let resolve. He then placed the snapcaster on the field and targeted a negate in his graveyard, which he placed on the field and said flashback negate on your spell. I cast remand on his negate, and he paused for 3-4 seconds before reaching for the negate and exiling it, I picked up my remand and placed it in the graveyard, waited a second then drew a card. Immediately he called a judge, saying that the remand didn't resolve.
While he never said "ok" I assumed by placing the spell into exile, he was letting the spell be countered, as it shouldn't be in exile until it is finished resolving or was countered, and was thus misrepresenting the game state. The judge ultimately ruled that I had drawn an extra card as he never verbally stated the remand had resolved despite him placing the negate in exile. I was given a game loss for the infraction.
Moral of the story, people will do scummy things when money is on the line, and the only thing you can do is cover yourself. Fastforward to now, I always announce "Draw for Turn/Think Twice/Esper Charm" and any triggers. Sucks, but it beats getting knocked out of Day 2 contention for a mistake.
Ive been busy this weekend! Took second place in FNM on Friday, finished my MTGO Competitive League 2-3 :(, and just now got back from a PPTQ. Ended up in 3rd place losing to Temur Traverse in the semis. All in all the final record was 5-2, and I was pretty happy with the run!
My MTGO deck is slightly different, with most of the changes being in the sideboard. No EE's on MTGO since I didn't feel like spending 40 tix a pop. Also only 3 Colonnades and 2 Mana Leaks in the main.
Round 1: 0-2 vs. Affinity
Round 2: 2-1 vs. Grixis Delver
Round 3: 2-1 vs. Ad Nauseum
Round 4: 2-1 vs. Jund
Round 5: 2-1 vs. RG Tron
Quarterfinals: 2-1 vs UWR Nahiri
Semifinals: 0-2 vs Temur Traverse
I might have been able to win the affinity game, but for some reason I looked at his lands to make sure there wasn't manlands while I was at 1, and mistook the blinkmoth nexus he just played for darksteel citadel. Ended up dying to a blinkmoth with 3 counterspells in hand :(. After that game I tightened up my play quite a bit, and eeked out some some close victories! Got to do a bunch of "blue shenanigans" with Snapcaster Mage, Cryptic Command, and Esper Charm acting as build your own Kolaghan's Command.
I don't remember enough to do a detailed report, as my brain is totally fried from 7 hard fought rounds, but I do have a few things to share.
MVPS:
Snapcaster Mage - 3 of this guy feels so perfect, he does it all from ambush viper beats against tron, to double dipping on thoughtseize against Ad Nauseum. Got to do some fun sequencing with a pair of these guys and Cryptic Command and Esper Charm against UWR nahiri in a brutal series of 2 for 1s.
Timely Reinforcements - The nuts against aggro decks, and solid against anything with creatures. A small price to pay for occasionally invalidating aggro decks in game 1.
Secure The Wastes - I don't think I'm even gonna cut this card. It's versatility is just insane, as many decks aren't equipped to deal with many small creatures. Almost never a card you are unhappy to draw.
Spreading Seas - This card alongside early pressure is our best bet against tron IMO. Won me a game against Tron as well as Ad Nauseum. Cantripping answers to problem lands? Sign me up.
Spell snare on the other hand... has been a little underwhelming. Sometimes its just the nuts, but half the time it just rots in your hand. Maybe I'll try out some alternatives just to compare? Maybe an extra Knot and a Spell Burst?
I think my favorite part about this tournament is that I got to see a lot of the Tier 1/2 decks, and had q pretty decent track record against them. Almost every game where I lost a match, I ended up losing game 1, only to come back in the last two matches to snag the victory. Overall I'm very happy with the deck,
Afterwards I'll be testing an Esper Gifts Variant. Ill keep around the pieces to Esper Draw-Go for sure, but I just need to be doing something proactive locally for now. I'm itching to play Collective Brutality as well, so that should be fun.
How do we beat a wide meta game? My shop has people a wildly different rogue decks, and I feel like I just can't keep up with it. Last night I went 0-3 drop, losing to 5c Hatebears, RG Ponza, and a very spell heavy burn list.
Admittedly drawing no wrath effects against hatebears was probably the reason I got slaughtered so badly, but in round two being on the draw against T1 Elf, T2 Stone Rain, T3 Acidmoss, T4 Inferno Titan was a beating. Same thing in Game two except I had mana leak for the stone rain. Unfortunately he passed on turn 2, then dropped a Thrun, followed by the rest of the gang.
We have such an oddball metagame, that trying to sideboard for it is just awful. My friend is trying to get me to switch over to UWR Nahiri, and I have most of the pieces already. Sometimes it just feels like not having an "I win" button is a deathwish. Tonight I brought some hate for combo decks as last friday we had 3 people on Taking Turns, 2 on Ad Nauseum, 1 on GR Tron, 1 on UW Tron, two Naya Company 2 Burn and 1 Bogles. Tonight I saw 1 Affinity, 1 Turns, 1 Bushwacker Zoo, 1 Burn, 1 Infect, 1 5c Hatebears, 1 Eldrazi, 1 Bant Humans. Whats the plan against wildly shifting metagames? Do we have one?
My guess would be that he is relying on other counterspells like leak and knot. I picked up his version of the deck online a few weeks back, and have been making a few changes. As far as paper goes I dropped to a single Spell Snare, but wasn't a fan. Currently I'm running two, which I've been happy with. Also I put in a Reflecting Pool and have been quite happy with it. Its not often that the issue is finding 1 of each color, but its trying to hit triple blue, double white and black on turn 4. Serum Visions as a two of hasn't been terrible either.
Really the only thing I've translated to paper from MTGO testing is Reflecting Pool and Secure the Wastes, everything else has yet to prove itself.
After a bunch of good finishes with the deck recently, I'm happy with a lot of it, but last friday I got absolutely slaughtered. 1-1-2 finish, drawing against Mono Blue Turns and UW Tron, and losing to Naya Company. 1st game against company was fine, but Turn 2 Blood Moon against our Celestial Colonnade is pretty strong. Afterwards I decided to make a few changes.
With 4+ decks trying to actively Blood Moon me out of the game, EE looks real good. Bonus points for also being pretty solid in a fair amount of matchups. With Celestial Purge it makes 7 anti-Blood Moon cards post board, so hopefuly we stopped getting killed by people ramping those out...
Souls is still a fantastic card, and honestly with a little disruption can really clock some of the combo decks.
I've been playing the exact 60 from a few weeks back, and have missed spell snare. The problem is, what to cut for it... probobly remand?
Also as much as I like lingering souls, I've dropped down to two and may even cut it as my meta game is really... odd... off the top of my head:
4 Naya Burn
1 Mono Red Prowess
1 Affinity
1 Affinity/UW Tron
1 Ad Nauseum
1 Ad Nauseum/RW Nahiri Prison
2 Mono Blue Turns
1 Skred Red
2 Naya Company
1 UWR Nahiri
1 Blue Moon
1 4C Gifts
1 GR Tron
1 U Tron
1 Scapeshift
2 Bogles
Right off the bat you see midrange is almost non-existant. Most notably, we have a single player on Jund who comes about once a month, other than that however the only "midrange" is Naya Company. Infect is also missing from our metagame which is welcome since our matchup isn't amazing. What this does mean however is that Souls is much less attractive. Another change is the omission of Hallowed Burial. While I think its awesome against alot of decks, bogles is really the only deck in my meta its outstanding against. Engineered explosives however, is an allstar. With 3 decks trying to actively blood moon me out of the game preboard, and 6 post board explosives helps us actually play magic. Additionally its a house against linear aggro and decks like turns.
This is the list I'm gonna run after EMN drops. A couple questions for you guys though. I will say I kinda missed Spell Snare, Dark Confidant was everywhere this weekend, and I had to Path one when my opponent was stuck on two lands early which felt super bad. On the other hand I feel like there is nothing I wan't to cut for Snare.
Second of all I can't figure out what to board out against GBx. Cards that are good in the Board include
Thats 9 cards, and I'm hard pressed to find 9 bad cards in our maindeck. Additionally when I played them, without spell snare it felt like jamming a bob on Turn two forced me to path it or get buried in card advantage. Is it worth bringing in TSeize? While I feel favored in the long game, without the snares we are really lacking in early game interaction. If they play beaters we can usually take a few hits but bob can really run away with a game if he isn't dealt with stat. So my question is, how do we play this matchup. Do we side out counterspells and bring in Seizes, Souls and Leyline and try to be the better midrange deck? Leyline makes Hand Disruption, Lili, and KCommand a lot less threatening, so watering down our deck with extra copies feels worth to it turn off a quarter of their deck. Seize feels like a necessary evil so we don't get buried by early Bobs or Lilis. What do you guys think?
4 Tarmogoyf
3 Dark Confidant
3 Grim Flayer
2 Scavenging Ooze
3 Bloodbraid Elf
Planeswalker
4 Liliana of the Veil
Instants and Soc.
4 Lightning Bolt
3 Inquistion
3 Thoughtsieze
2 Fatal Push
1 Terminate
1 Dreadbore
2 Kolaghan's Command
1 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Verdant Catacombs
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
2 Overgown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Twilight Mire
3 Raging Ravine
2 Swamp
1 Forest
Played this last night, had some success. Didn't change my board even thought I had 3 additional 4 drops which was a mistake imo, even if having such a big top end helped me out against all the Jace decks.
Grim Flayer over performed a lot. Breaking though X/1 blockers and still killing Jace is really nice. He can run with game if you get him through on Turn 2 as well, sets up BBE nicely and helps Dark Confidant randomly kill you out of nowhere. (We have all had the ol' Flip 4 drop into 3 drop into 4 drop before. I split him and Confidant 3/3 so I could get a better feel for Flayer and I think he is fantastic.
Bolt is good, but I don't know if dropping to 2 Pushes is right. Yeah push is lackluster against Jace but its still so good against Goyf and so many other cards. Maybe adding more of other unconditional removal back will help.
I missed Abrupt Decay in the main a lot as well. Its not the greatest right now but it's almost never dead.
1 Dreadbore over a Terminate felt fine. Gives us one more answer to Jace and hits other stuff like Karn/Ugin. Might be better as Pulse #2.
Not sure how I feel about 2 KCommand main, 1 might be right.
All in all I think I could go
+1 Terminate / -1 K Command
+1 Abrupt Decay / -1 Scavenging Ooze
+1 Dark Confidant / -1 Grim Flayer
MAYBE +1 Fatal Push / -1 Lightning Bolt
3 Thoughtseize
4 Fatal Push
2 Lightning Helix
1 Dreadbore
2 Lingering Souls
2 Painful Truths
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Grim Lavamancer
4 Dark Confidant
4 Glory-Bound Initiate
3 Abbot of Keral Keep
1 Kalitas, Traitor of Ghet (Flex)
24 Lands:
4 Marsh Flats
3 Bloodstained Mire
2 Arid Mesa
2 Godless Shrine
1 Blood Crypt
1 Sacred Foundry
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Shambling Vent
1 Needle Spires
2 Swamp
1 Plains
1 Slayers' Stronghold (Flex)
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Collective Brutality
2 Rest in Peace
3 Fulminator Mage
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Wear//Tear
1 Crackling Doom
1 Lost Legacy
1 Shatterstorm
1 Blood Baron of Vizkopa
Anyone else have any experience with Glory-Bound Initiate? He's been solid so far. The deck has been surprisingly strong considering I kinda threw it together on a whim. Seems to be at least playable, but then again, a pile of removal and efficient creatures can only be so bad. With the Initiate I feel okay supporting 2 Painful Truths in the main alongside Confidant for a wild ride of card advantage. Slayers' Stronghold was initially just a joke to see if I could start swinging with a 6/4 Vigilant Initiate. After playing with it, its kinda grown on me. It turns Initiates into overdrive and has won me a game or two i had no business winning. It even lets me play "build-your-own-bloodbraid-elf" with lategame Abbots. It still may be worse than a Ghost Quarter but I'm willing to sacrifice power for I felt like i'd share the list. Izzet Staticaster makes very ver sad
4 Path to Exile
1 Blessed Alliance
3 Supreme Verdict
Permission
2 Logic Knot
1 Negate
4 Cryptic Command
Card Draw
2 Serum Visions
4 Think Twice
4 Esper Charm
2 Sphinx's Revelation
Misc.
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Dimir Charm
1 Timely Reinforcements
2 Secure the Wastes
3 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Watery Grave
2 Drowned Catacomb
2 Glacial Fortress
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Ghost Quarter
3 Island
1 Swamp
1 Plains
2 Dispel
2 Thoughtseize
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Blessed Alliance
2 Spreading Seas
2 Lingering Souls
1 Gideon Jura
1 Hallowed Burial
1 Curse of Death's Hold
Been testing out Spellbomb over RiP. We want to utilize the graveyard so much between Think Twice, Souls, Snapcaster and Logic Knot. Ideally you side out some of those cards and RiP hurts your opponent more than it hurts you, but running Spellbomb let's us bring it in against decks like Grixis without hurting our deck. I may switch back to RiP, but only time will tell.
Also I cut down to 3 Charms for a PPTQ, and made it to Top 4. After the dirty things I did to people today online with Esper Charm however, I can't justify NOT running the full set. One game my opponent cast a Tooth and Nail to drop two huge fatties from his hand, but only had two in hand. He conceded quickly after I fired off the Esper Charm in mind rot mode
Snapcaster
Dark Confidant
Steel Overseer
Thalia
Kiki-Jiki
Voice of Resurgence
Merfolk
Birds of Paradise
Noble Heirarch
Spellskite
Eidolon
Disfigure is always an option, but maybe the versatility is worth the extra mana? Maybe not. I'm willing to give it a shot.
Sorceries that come to mind...
Inquisition
Thoughtseize
Lava Spike
Crumble to Dust
Maelstrom Pulse
Sylvan Scrying
Eldritch Evolution
Traverse
Story from my first GP While I played Grixis Delver. I cast a spell, followed by opponent casting a Snapcaster which I let resolve. He then placed the snapcaster on the field and targeted a negate in his graveyard, which he placed on the field and said flashback negate on your spell. I cast remand on his negate, and he paused for 3-4 seconds before reaching for the negate and exiling it, I picked up my remand and placed it in the graveyard, waited a second then drew a card. Immediately he called a judge, saying that the remand didn't resolve.
While he never said "ok" I assumed by placing the spell into exile, he was letting the spell be countered, as it shouldn't be in exile until it is finished resolving or was countered, and was thus misrepresenting the game state. The judge ultimately ruled that I had drawn an extra card as he never verbally stated the remand had resolved despite him placing the negate in exile. I was given a game loss for the infraction.
Moral of the story, people will do scummy things when money is on the line, and the only thing you can do is cover yourself. Fastforward to now, I always announce "Draw for Turn/Think Twice/Esper Charm" and any triggers. Sucks, but it beats getting knocked out of Day 2 contention for a mistake.
My MTGO deck is slightly different, with most of the changes being in the sideboard. No EE's on MTGO since I didn't feel like spending 40 tix a pop. Also only 3 Colonnades and 2 Mana Leaks in the main.
2 Serum Visions
4 Think Twice
3 Esper Charm
2 Sphinx's Revelation
Counterspells
2 Spell Snare
2 Logic Knot
1 Negate
4 Cryptic Command
Removal
3 Supreme Verdict
1 Blessed Alliance
4 Path to Exile
"Creatures"
3 Snapcaster Mage
2 Secure the Wastes
1 Timely Reinforcements
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Watery Grave
2 Drowned Catacomb
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Reflecting Pool
1 Ghost Quarter
3 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Dispel
2 Thoughtseize
1 Surgical Extraction
2 Spreading Seas
2 Lingering Souls
3 Leyline of Sanctity
1 Hallowed Burial
1 Fracturing Gust
Round 1: 0-2 vs. Affinity
Round 2: 2-1 vs. Grixis Delver
Round 3: 2-1 vs. Ad Nauseum
Round 4: 2-1 vs. Jund
Round 5: 2-1 vs. RG Tron
Quarterfinals: 2-1 vs UWR Nahiri
Semifinals: 0-2 vs Temur Traverse
I might have been able to win the affinity game, but for some reason I looked at his lands to make sure there wasn't manlands while I was at 1, and mistook the blinkmoth nexus he just played for darksteel citadel. Ended up dying to a blinkmoth with 3 counterspells in hand :(. After that game I tightened up my play quite a bit, and eeked out some some close victories! Got to do a bunch of "blue shenanigans" with Snapcaster Mage, Cryptic Command, and Esper Charm acting as build your own Kolaghan's Command.
I don't remember enough to do a detailed report, as my brain is totally fried from 7 hard fought rounds, but I do have a few things to share.
MVPS:
Snapcaster Mage - 3 of this guy feels so perfect, he does it all from ambush viper beats against tron, to double dipping on thoughtseize against Ad Nauseum. Got to do some fun sequencing with a pair of these guys and Cryptic Command and Esper Charm against UWR nahiri in a brutal series of 2 for 1s.
Timely Reinforcements - The nuts against aggro decks, and solid against anything with creatures. A small price to pay for occasionally invalidating aggro decks in game 1.
Secure The Wastes - I don't think I'm even gonna cut this card. It's versatility is just insane, as many decks aren't equipped to deal with many small creatures. Almost never a card you are unhappy to draw.
Spreading Seas - This card alongside early pressure is our best bet against tron IMO. Won me a game against Tron as well as Ad Nauseum. Cantripping answers to problem lands? Sign me up.
Spell snare on the other hand... has been a little underwhelming. Sometimes its just the nuts, but half the time it just rots in your hand. Maybe I'll try out some alternatives just to compare? Maybe an extra Knot and a Spell Burst?
I think my favorite part about this tournament is that I got to see a lot of the Tier 1/2 decks, and had q pretty decent track record against them. Almost every game where I lost a match, I ended up losing game 1, only to come back in the last two matches to snag the victory. Overall I'm very happy with the deck,
4 Path to Exile
2 Spell Snare
4 Think Twice
3 Logic Knot
3 Snapcaster Mage
1 Negate
1 Blessed Alliance
4 Esper Charm
1 Timely Reinforcements
4 Cryptic Command
3 Supreme Verdict
2 Sphinx's Revelation
2 Secure the Wastes
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Watery Grave
2 Drowned Catacomb
1 Glacial Fortress
3 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
2 Ghost Quarter
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Dispel
2 Lingering Souls
2 Thoughseize
2 Spreading Seas
1 Hallowed Burial
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Disfigure
1 Summary Dismissal
Afterwards I'll be testing an Esper Gifts Variant. Ill keep around the pieces to Esper Draw-Go for sure, but I just need to be doing something proactive locally for now. I'm itching to play Collective Brutality as well, so that should be fun.
Admittedly drawing no wrath effects against hatebears was probably the reason I got slaughtered so badly, but in round two being on the draw against T1 Elf, T2 Stone Rain, T3 Acidmoss, T4 Inferno Titan was a beating. Same thing in Game two except I had mana leak for the stone rain. Unfortunately he passed on turn 2, then dropped a Thrun, followed by the rest of the gang.
We have such an oddball metagame, that trying to sideboard for it is just awful. My friend is trying to get me to switch over to UWR Nahiri, and I have most of the pieces already. Sometimes it just feels like not having an "I win" button is a deathwish. Tonight I brought some hate for combo decks as last friday we had 3 people on Taking Turns, 2 on Ad Nauseum, 1 on GR Tron, 1 on UW Tron, two Naya Company 2 Burn and 1 Bogles. Tonight I saw 1 Affinity, 1 Turns, 1 Bushwacker Zoo, 1 Burn, 1 Infect, 1 5c Hatebears, 1 Eldrazi, 1 Bant Humans. Whats the plan against wildly shifting metagames? Do we have one?
Really the only thing I've translated to paper from MTGO testing is Reflecting Pool and Secure the Wastes, everything else has yet to prove itself.
With 4+ decks trying to actively Blood Moon me out of the game, EE looks real good. Bonus points for also being pretty solid in a fair amount of matchups. With Celestial Purge it makes 7 anti-Blood Moon cards post board, so hopefuly we stopped getting killed by people ramping those out...
Souls is still a fantastic card, and honestly with a little disruption can really clock some of the combo decks.
2 Logic Knot
2 Negate
2 Spell Snare
1 Spell Burst
Removal
4 Path to Exile
1 Blessed Alliance
3 Supreme Verdict
Card Advatage
4 Think Twice
4 Esper Charm
2 Sphinx's Revelation
Wincons
2 Secure the Wastes
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
2 Hallowed Fountain
2 Watery Grave
3 Drowned Catacomb
1 Glacial Fortress
1 Ghost Quarter
3 Island
1 Plains
1 Swamp
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Vendilion Clique
2 Lingering Souls
1 Celestial Purge
1 Blessed Alliance
2 Thoughtseize
1 Surgical Extraction
1 Dispel
2 Engineered Explosives
Also as much as I like lingering souls, I've dropped down to two and may even cut it as my meta game is really... odd... off the top of my head:
Right off the bat you see midrange is almost non-existant. Most notably, we have a single player on Jund who comes about once a month, other than that however the only "midrange" is Naya Company. Infect is also missing from our metagame which is welcome since our matchup isn't amazing. What this does mean however is that Souls is much less attractive. Another change is the omission of Hallowed Burial. While I think its awesome against alot of decks, bogles is really the only deck in my meta its outstanding against. Engineered explosives however, is an allstar. With 3 decks trying to actively blood moon me out of the game preboard, and 6 post board explosives helps us actually play magic. Additionally its a house against linear aggro and decks like turns.
3 Snapcaster Mage
Spells
4 Path to Exile
1 Secure the Wastes
1 Spell Burst
1 Spell Snare
2 Logic Knot
2 Negate
1 Remand
1 Blessed Alliance
4 Think Twice
4 Esper Charm
2 Sphinx's Revelation
4 Cryptic Command
3 Supreme Verdict
4 Celestial Colonnade
3 Drowned Catacomb
4 Flooded Strand
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Glacial Fortress
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Island
1 Plains
4 Polluted Delta
1 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
3 Leyline of Sanctity
3 Lingering Souls
2 Blessed Alliance
2 Thoughtseize
1 Hallowed Burial
1 Elspeth Sun's Champion
1 Celestial Purge
1 Dispel
1 Vendilion Clique
This is the list I'm gonna run after EMN drops. A couple questions for you guys though. I will say I kinda missed Spell Snare, Dark Confidant was everywhere this weekend, and I had to Path one when my opponent was stuck on two lands early which felt super bad. On the other hand I feel like there is nothing I wan't to cut for Snare.
Second of all I can't figure out what to board out against GBx. Cards that are good in the Board include
Thats 9 cards, and I'm hard pressed to find 9 bad cards in our maindeck. Additionally when I played them, without spell snare it felt like jamming a bob on Turn two forced me to path it or get buried in card advantage. Is it worth bringing in TSeize? While I feel favored in the long game, without the snares we are really lacking in early game interaction. If they play beaters we can usually take a few hits but bob can really run away with a game if he isn't dealt with stat. So my question is, how do we play this matchup. Do we side out counterspells and bring in Seizes, Souls and Leyline and try to be the better midrange deck? Leyline makes Hand Disruption, Lili, and KCommand a lot less threatening, so watering down our deck with extra copies feels worth to it turn off a quarter of their deck. Seize feels like a necessary evil so we don't get buried by early Bobs or Lilis. What do you guys think?