Hi guys. I am a URW geist Player (Ex patriot delver player). I am testing a lot these days since i'll have a GPT next week to afford. I have found that i do very badly against black decks since their discard spells really I talked with an Esper player and a BUG player and they both were URW players before. They told they abandoned it properly because Black is definitely better. Should i try to switch to Esper? i don't own Liliana, but i see lists that just do not carry it. Now my choice is to go back to patriot delver with lynxes, or to try esper. Any advice?
Hi iamghost, welcome to this thread, wolf here I understand the power of black spells, which I have also highlighted in this thread that how black discard seemingly overpowers blue countermagic in modern. There are 2 versions of this deck here, one that works with geist that resembles UWR midrange more, and the shaman version, which resembles BUG/Jund more (but lacking goyfs).
Since you were playing UWR geist, I would presume that you may wanna try the geist version. Should you wish to try the geist version, I would like to highlight to you some notes first
- This deck is slower than UWR geist. It focus more establishing a firm control over the boardstate and then goes into near inevitable beatdown, rather than focusing on lifetotals. Therefore, it is considerably more on the controllish side and cannot steal games away by burning that UWR can. As a result, the difficulty level may be higher. Also, it has a harder matchup against RDW since it has no lightning helix to help mitigate burn.
- This deck simply just walks over goyf, almost any removal in this deck can kill goyf. Therefore, it is more resilient against goyf than UWR.
- I must say that based of my games, this deck has a favorable matchup against UWR. We have so many answers against them.
- This deck relies on recursion and discard (to selectively neg the opponent) to generate it's virtual CA. It has no card draw, the downside is that if you open with a subpar hand, you can't rely on drawing into better cards, on the other hand, due to this inherent drawback, you should seek to fill up this deck with strong independent spells, and so you would topdeck better.
- This deck has a stronger matchup against combo, due to its heavy disruption package that is made up of a combination of discard and counters.
- Creeping tarpits are within boltable range, but their cheaper activation cost and being unblockable, provides very solid inevitability.
- Liliana is a choice in this deck, you may prefer an instant speed sac spell like geth's verdict/devour flesh. I remembered I had a game against a rg tron player and he dropped an emrakul, he thought he was winning, then I responded with an instant speed geth's verdict, and he was just taken by surprise haha.
IMO you would need some practice with this deck, so I wouldn't really suggest it if you do not have much time left for the GPT. Jund Midrange would be a much safer choice but I am not sure if you have the goyfs and bobs. But if you have the cards readily available for this deck now, perhaps try out a few games and see how you feel about it. This deck is still developing, I would surely appreciate more inputs and feedback from you all I would also very appreciate if the esper player that you talked to could share his esper list with us
I borrowed fenrisian's black spot removal suite but i've gone with 2 restoration angels and 2 makeshift mannequin at the top of the curve.
Makeshift mannequin has great synergy with all the creatures with EtB effects and can return a geist to the battlefield at instant speed with no drawback because of hexproof. So in UWr geist can dodge damage all day with restoration angel but they have no out against the legend rule, we can mannequin our geist back in when they both die in a mirror match.
It also opens up the possibility of cutting down on 2 instant speed removal and adding 2 shriekmaw instead as well as a some fulminator mage in the s/b.
The reason being that every modern thread i've been on recently people are commenting on how greedy modern land bases are, so i think mannequin + fulminator could be a legitimate form of disruption to get our geist's through. I'd have to rethink paths though with the lack of synergy.
We'll see if i get the time to test the theory.
Makeshift Mannequin is interesting (anyway I think you repeated them in your sorcery section of your list). Please keep us updated on how its working out for you
Yes, indeed I run a lot of spot removal in this deck. Even more so now, after the nerfing of storm and eggs. Interesting that modern is becoming a creature heavy format And that makes spot removal effective against most of the field (not all though. decks like UWR ajani control, esper teachings etc. dodges all that).
I find surgical extraction a very interesting sb card. It is an sweet companion with tiago, it is a form of graveyard hate, it can also help against some combo decks (ie. it would be interesting to surgical that stomping ground/sacred foundry from scapeshift. It seldom happens but wouldn't it be nice to tec edge a urza tower then surgical it. etc.)
I have a strange feeling and I could be wrong but it may be worth trying boros charm vs GW hatebears. Sometimes perhaps that 4 damage burn or double strike is all you need to win. Afterall, as I mentioned it is a far easier strategy to try to win by just being faster.
IMO, Rest in peace would be one of the A-list graveyard hate unless if your opponent boards in enchantment hate. The way it troubles Melira Pod, Gifts Control, Vengevine etc. buys quite some time. And for this deck, having some time in favor of you often leads to a win.
Sideboarding-wise I am more incline to support this interesting idea of what I call "diversified" sideboarding (people can always call it something else), the idea is to have a set of cards that serve the same purpose but are of different types for which there is no overlapping hate against it (a simple example is for Artifact hate: Kataki, War's Wage is a legend creature, disenchant is an instant, stony silence is an enchantment). The reason for doing this, it's so that your opponent's would find it harder to sideboard against your sideboard, at the very least he would have no one card answer to deal with ALL your hate against him (ie. your opponent plays vengevine, your sideboard's graveyard hate package is 4 Rest in Peace, he guesses that and boards in 4 naturalize, and tada your sideboard didn't matter)
sphinx in MB slows down the deck, and occupies 2 slots that are surely counters or removals. since the deck suffer faster decks, it's vital to always have removals for the creatures that are a nightmare for us (Thalia, Arbiter, Mindcensor, Finks, Goyfs, Bob) and to counter threats both to gain time (remand) and to not allow them to be on board because if they do it's a disaster (like Liliana, Garruk, Karn, etc). I usually prefer to be well protected in the very first turns, because when i come to turn 4 i usually can do lots of things (Angel, command, etc) and if i come there with a pretty empty board, i am in control.
Wow good to know that a lot of activity is going on here I too agree that MB sphinx slows down the deck. Honestly, for myself, I don't play sphinx, haha I don't even play commands (part of the reason is that I am still uncomfortable with it's cost, the other reason is that I don't have them yet and they are expensive now lol), I am more incline to support the notion of having cheap answers in this deck that can deal with fast threats. Because it is just plain simple to win by being faster, and there are a lot of faster decks out there that work by this principle and try to overrun us with speed (ie. RDW, zoo, affinity/robots, infect etc.). Therefore, yup like I said, I am more incline to support the idea of having cheap and efficient answers. Having cheap efficient spells also allows me to more conveniently change gear to become more aggressive and to hasten up the pace of the game to my advantage. (don't ask me why I am not playing the delver variant, it's just because I find that it lacks the versatility to survive the long game and I have seen so many people having problems flipping delver) The downside of that is that pass midgame, I am going to try to fight it out with incremental advantage instead of the explosive advantage that cards like command and sphinx offer. This also explains why my deck has 14 creatures to compensate for the lack of massive CA by increasing the threat density.
I can't say which is the way to go, unless someone can convince us of the way forward, I could be wrong for now but I guess as of now this is just a matter of risk appetite here, some of us (like me) prefer to lower the curve and the variance and prefer the implied versatility, some of us wouldn't mind raising that tolerance to allow for greater power. But perhaps this difference here can affect the strategy of the deck's game play. It would be logical to say that if you have so powerful high cost spells like commands and sphinx, you would be inclined to prefer that the game drags into midgame, from then on you would have a better chance of relative advantage in most matchups (with the exception of a few decks like GW Hatebears and Gifts Control etc.). However, if like my deck which packs in mainly cheaper effiicient spells, I guess I am relatively more "indifferent" to such an effect with the exception of having to survive the first 3 turns against faster decks. Such a difference can subconsciously affect the way we play, we just need to make sure that we are aware of it and it's implications on our tempo and on the matchups
Speaking of which, @FZA, I think this primer would need some matchup analysis to help the new and existing players have a better understanding of how to operate this deck against various matchups. I shall start the ball rolling here, everyone please feel free to add in any constructive suggestions so that we can all improve our matchup understanding. And hopefully eventually, FZA could help incorporate the fruits of all these discussions in the primer content
VS Jund (Even)
I think that are 2 ways to play this game.
1. If we can resolve a geist, then it is time to play agressively. Make sure we can keep attacking with geist, protect him, clear his path and then steal the game away.
2. If we cannot resolve geist (don't have it in the hand / it got discarded), then the game becomes more subtle and it becomes a trading game. We would then have to time our spells very precisely and squeeze out as much value as possible to out-CA them and come out on top of the trading game. Goyf, Finks, Lili and in some builds souls are the main concerns. While electrolyzes help deal with souls, shaman and Bob, we must use that mana leak and path to exile wisely against finks, goyf and lili. And remember bolt that raging ravine before it declares attacks and becomes a 4/4. Work through every phase of the game very very thoughtfully. Use Tec edges very strategically, it can protect you from raging ravine / treetop village, and it can also help you to deny them the white mana to cast souls (if they play the souls version).
Postboard: Celestial Purge helps kill a resolved lili and Olivia. Rest in Peace may hurt your Tiago, but it hurts their goyf, shaman, finks and souls. Wraths can punish the Jund player for overextending. Sulfur Elemental may be a nice tech to flash in and kill souls while pumping your angel.
VS GW Hatebear (Even):
GW Hatebears is very powerful in the late game (thrun and sigarda etc. and hence they try to accel it offensively with hierarch), against them preboard, do not focus too much on the board state, direct your attention more to the opponent's life total, we need to go all out aggressive, start the beat down as early as we can(drop that T3 geist if you can, if you have ample burn spells then you can drop that tiago on T2, fight without hesitation), kill that mana dork (hierarch) and deny them the accel, burn the player if possible at every end of their turn if they pass the turn or you have enough mana to burn, then take it from the sky and beat them down with airstrikes (they lack flying blockers aside from sigarda etc.) and finish them off with more burn. You cannot be delayed, you cannot hesitate in this matchup, and you must keep dealing damage, so you can steal this game away.
Postboard: Wrath of God kills Thrun and Sigarda and punishes them for overextending. Boros Charm can be good here to speed up the kill, sometimes perhaps that 4 damage burn or double strike is all you need to win.
VS Tron (Slightly Favorable):
Play very aggressively in this matchup and try your very best to take the opponent's life total down to "burnable" range before they establish tron, then kill them off with burn. Eiganjo castle protects against RG trons Pyroclasm. Tec Edges may help you delay them, path deals with wurmcoil engine, counter that karn. Use manlands to play around Blue Trons counterspells. Attack relentlessly.
Postboard: Aven Mindcensor slow them down. Stony Silence denies their artifacts (ie. Batterskull, Mindslaver, O stone, map and eggs etc.) from activating. Sowing Salts/molten rain for more land hate. Pithing Needle seals Karn. Negates counters the Karn and Mindslaver. Boros Charm is good in this matchup to protect geist from o stone/pyroclasm, and increase damage output.
VS RDW (Unfavorable):
IMO I hate this matchup, they just senselessly keep trying to maximize the damage math everyturn. Lightning helix is important here to slow them down (but you gotta be careful of skullcrack). Hang on, slow them down as best as you can until they run out of gas, then they are just your's for the taking.
Postboard: You can say 4 Leyline of sanctity, if you have the SB space. Timely reinforcements is magical here (just play around that skull crack), Kor Firewalker is also nice to slow them down while keeping a protected from red blocker or attacker.
(1) mental misstep is banned. my friend laughed at me for having it in my sideboard.
(2) the 4 Snap 4 GoST 3 Angel build is >>> 4 Snap 4 GoST 1 Angel 3 Clique build. at least against Melira Pod (or even just considering who is piloting the decks). with resto i found i could keep the pressure on with GoST. with clique i was waaay to responsive. i know this is essentially flash, but we need *some* win condition. if i could get my hands on Clique i would run it in the sideboard for combo.
It is indeed true, that angel offers much more versatility to the deck, her combat tricks with geist is just beautiful.
i think you are right about mastering it correctly. this deck offers you more than a choice a turn, and maybe they all seem fine at the moment. But there is always one that's slightly better and sometimes (ok, most of the times) the choice you make is gonna decide your victory or defeat maybe 3,4,5 turns later. This deck does not have very favourable MUs, is kinda equilibrated, so every time you need to really take the 100% from the cards you have otherwise you are gonna pay every error. the hard thing is, as i said, usually there are very big mistakes you can do, i mean, sometimes it just seems the same to cast this or that spell. But it's never, never the same. I find it hard to choose, sometimes, from t3 geist or Vendilion eot, for example, or between using snapcaster to flashback a spell or cast another copy of that very spell directly from my hand, or stuff like that.
and i prolly agree with you about creatures. The control version ran a very few creatures but was more able to lead the game where it wanted to go, being able to use safely its few threats in late game. but this is not as controllish as that version, so we prolly need more creatures. ALl of these manlands and land distruction, too, are very bad for our celestial colonnades since they aren't safe finishers anymore. i always saw them as late game finishers but the more we come to late game the more the other man lands can be used to stop them. Maybe i should add the third copy of vendilion clique ?
yeah, for sure. unofrtunately meta is very different as you can see from my previous post. top 8 was aggro, midrange, combo... there were pretty much all the most important archetypes. It's been just casuality that i found only aggro ones (besides living end). Electrolyze is there because i suffer a lot against affinity and lingering souls and that definitely saves me, plus, as you said, it's always an useful burn that helps me drawing, so it's better than izzet charm i think. i ran it in patriot delver but it's not the best of any of the 3 options it gives. there are better counters, better burns, better draw cards. so i think i am not gonna run it. i was thinking of changing mana leak for counterflux MB which seemed very useful in my testings when i sided it in (never had a chance to use it yesterday because of the matchups) but i don't want the deck to be too slow and cmc heavy.
the gw one was pretty much hatebears, with hierarch, loxodon, thalia, leonin arbiter (it killed me g2, damn it) thrun and so on.. and those man lands 3/4 with reach that did not allow me to use colonnade. I never had a problem with patriot delver against this archetype so i really never tested against it with Geist of saint win... and i prolly did wrong. BTW i think in a few days lists should be online so maybe i am gonna tell you more about top8.
It is indeed true that in UWR midrange, what we offer is a fair fight, thus it is hardly so that we have any overwhelming advantage over any matchup, and to win a fair fight we ought to play cautiously and try to squeeze out as much value as possible from every spell, also we must have a very good understanding of our opponent's decks to direct the pace of the game to their disadvantage.
GW Hatebears is very powerful in the late game (thrun and sigarda etc. and hence they try to accel it offensively with hierarch), against them preboard, do not focus too much on the board state, direct your attention more to the opponent's life total, we need to go all out aggressive, start the beat down as early as we can(drop that T3 geist if you can, if you have ample burn spells then you can drop that tiago on T2, fight without hesitation), kill that mana dork (hierarch) and deny them the accel, burn the player if possible at every end of their turn if they pass the turn or you have enough mana to burn, then take it from the sky and beat them down with airstrikes (they lack flying blockers aside from sigarda etc.) and finish them off with more burn to "STEAL" the game away from them (yes in some matchups we are thieves ;)). Here in the mid game resto angel helps to blink an attacking geist to push in the extra damage if they have landbase blockers. Also angel has the advantage of a "big butt", the 4 toughness protects her from bolt and various burn spells (from a general meta standpoint). Hence, IMO I think it would be necessary to run at least 2-3 of resto angels for her aerial combat ability, "big butt", blink for ETB recursion or to evade spot removal, combat tricks with geist.
All in all, on hindsight I believe the above mentioned aggressive line of play was why you found the matchup much easier when you were playing UWR delver (which is a faster and more aggressive UWR tempo deck with lower curve). And since the UWR deck you used is slightly more incline to the controllish side and slightly lacks the threat density, it is understandable that you would have been at a disadvantage when the games draws out too long (pass midgame) and the GW hatebear's relatively stronger late game card quality would overwhelm you. You cannot be delayed, you cannot hesitate in this matchup, and you must keep dealing damage, so you can steal this game away.
back from today's event. Went 2-1-2, did not top 8ed for just 1 game, i played not very well and did some mistakes. In the end, the deck performed not so badly. Without some errors i did would prolly top 8ed.
here's the final list, followed by a very brief report and some questions for you all guys.
game 1 i won 2-0 against goblin. The only problem was i could not counter his creats both because cavern and vial. but i bolted and helixed and pathed every single creature and won by colonnade. post side i entered with stony silence, disenchant, path to exile and lightning helix leaving out remands and mana leaks.
game 2 i lost 1-2 from GW aggro. MB i did well but then he sided in Thrun, rest in peace and Loxodon. I sided in 1 path, 1 helix, and the 2 wraths. took out counters. i lost from thrun and loxodon g2 and g3. Leonin arbiter t2 was nuts against me.
game 3 i don't remember. i won 2-0 easily but did not remember the deck. i think it was gw aggro maybe?
game 4 i did 1-1 against living end. here i did some mistakes since i never played against it and did not know how the deck worked. won g1 from 3-19 to 3-0 lol. did not know how to side here. g2 i lost when he was at 6 life points. we decided to draw and try to win the next one (3-1-1 was enough to top8).
game 5 i lost 1-2 from gw aggro. same as before, did cool g1 and then lost from 2x loxodon, finks, and thalia t2. he broke me a land a turn and he played those man lands 3/4 with reach so i could not win from colonnade (he broke it twice as soon as it came into play) and geist.
i can say i am kinda satisfied of the deck, because prolly if i were more experienced i could have done better. it was my second time playing it live and i started playing magic 6 months ago so i know i can only become better with time.
Things i liked:
- a GoST t3 is gg most of the times. 4x forever.
- mystic gate as been useful and i never felt like it was a bad land.
- cryptic command is cool, even though i never know if i should bounce or draw. i am always undecided. BTW 3x is the way to go, 4x is too heavy.
- cheap removals (pte, bolt) are cool
things to change (maybe?) advice needed here
- 2x mana leak MB: never used them, always sided them out
- 2x counterflux SB: never sided them in
- 2x engineered explosives SB: same as counter flux
- electrolyze: sometimes useful, sometimes not so much.
- a couple of times i got flooded when i needed the most creatures. at the end, i think i played 1x creature less than what i should have done. i had just a few threats, and sometimes i needed more. i was pretty confident going late game because i thought it would have been better for me, but i drew lands and not threaths. on the other hand, i kept hands with just one land and never had problems with them since i always drew the lands i needed.
I think my SB doubts are based on the fact there was this meta. Prolly against affinity it would have been a great SB.
Against GW aggro i missed sphinx's revelation a lot. But i am still convinced we CAN'T play it MB, it's too heavy and cheap removals did very well. Maybe i should go 4x path to exile and 4 lightning helix MB taking out 2x mana leak.
thoughts? ideas? advices?
Overall I think the list is quite ok and probably it's a matter of practising more with the deck so that your performance can improve. UWR geist is not a hard deck to learn, but in order to fully master it can be quite an interesting challenge (ie. since it is considered a flash deck, then it is important to play through every game phase thoughtfully and time your spells precisely to maximise the value out of them. Being a versatile midrange deck, you would also need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your local meta decks, not just for sideboarding but also to be able to use your spells to strike at their weaknesses or deny them of their setup. You also need to understand how to direct the pace of the game to make it disadvantageous for your opponent, against some (especially combo decks) you need to switch to aggressive mode and crush and burn them quickly, against others you need to slow the game till they run out of gas and grind them out. etc.) Other than that, I just find 12 creatures in your deck rather "threat light", I still think Unwin was comfortable with that number because of his sphinx rev, without which I think the deck would need at least around 14 creatures.
I also think that your meta or rather your matchups seems rather aggro based (you mentioned of this GW aggro deck, that sounds interesting, can you share more about them? Is it GW hatebears? Or is it some other new brew?), that could be the main reason why mana leak was not so useful and cheap spot removal was much better, if your matchups were against tron, reanimator, jund, eggs, the mirror. delver etc. then you would find leaks to be of more use. So unless you are absolutely certain of walking into a heavy aggro meta, I would still suggest keeping at least 1-2 leaks mainboarded just in case. Electrolyze can be quite situational but at least it should able to hit most value creatures (ie. shaman, bob, tiago, clique, and most importantly lingering souls which can be quite an issue for geist unless if you have eiganjo ready etc.), but if you are walking into a meta with tons of loam lions and kird apes going around then yup it's not going to help you aside from shooting the player for 2 and drawing a card.
True, since modern is a very fast format, it is safer to keep the curve low.
I don't run sculler in my geist version (since it is creature-light), but I do so in the deathrite shaman version. A lot of people say that shaman is a good card, and can be played in any BG deck, IMO that is not true, because people can easily just bolt/disfigure etc. it, IMO it should be played in decks with a lot of creatures that "needs to be dealt with", that way with the limited removal in the opponent's hand, he's gonna have a hard time thinking which to target (instead of easily just shooting a lonely shaman), Sculler helps to meet this objective, let's say there's such a scenario: opponent only has a bolt in hand, you got a liliana in the hand and a shaman and a sculler (that exiled maybe let's say tarmogoyf) on the board, your opponent is gonna be in the position of having to make a choice. Another very common example, is a shaman standing next to dark confidant, if your opponent has only 1 removal/ enough mana to only cast 1 removal then he's gonna have to choose.
Yes truly, T1 shaman/inquistion, T2 Sculler, T3 clique indeed sets up a lot of hand disruption. Cliques are good for also the flying 3/1 body, and sometimes simply taking away just 1 card from the opponent's could be all it takes to totally foil his gameplan.
I think you are coming up with a lot of interesting new ideas, please keep it going, I am sure after some testing and finetuning you can come out with a very solid modern esper deck, please do keep me posted about your new findings then
But otherwise it's pretty much all here, esper charm, geist, snapcaster, lilly, lingering souls etc.
Need to have a think after seeing this.
Glad to know that this thread could be of some use to you
There are two versions here, one that uses geist which resembles more or UW/UWR, and the Shaman version which resembles more of jund. Both still have more room for refining.
I find obzedat an interesting idea, has it been working out well for you?
I feel like one or two targeted discard spells don't really hurt this deck much; snapcaster makes choosing targets a real challenge as you'll just get it back a couple turns later. If happen to nail Geist, well, that's annoying but certainly not enough to make this deck fall apart. If they run Thoughtseize and take your cryptic, big deal; this deck used to not run any cryptics at all. I can see an issue if they stick Lili and start annihilating your hand, but an Inquisition or two is hardly dangerous.
Exactly. I mean I am just making guess as to a few reasons why spell pierce would be run over mana leak. As you added, we have tiago to flashback, and we have cantrips to draw on, then discard should not really hurt us that much. So I would still suggest to Iamghost to run leaks over pierce.
Ok, that is game 2 and if you are so LUCKY to have it in your opening hand (yes, I repeat the word is lucky). Or perhaps you mb it. Cool story, very cool story~
aside from wrath of god, what do you guys think about my manabase and spell pierce?
1)should i go 2x tectonic edge to maintain seachrome coast and eiganjo castle, or should i tka eout seachrome for eiganjo and maintaining 3x tectonic edge? another thing would be to go to 2x tectonic to add a filterland.. but maybe tectonic is more useful since i am expecting lots of scapeshift
IMO my suggestions (there can always be better ones from others)
1. 2 tec edges are enough, 1 eiganjo should be in to protect geist and cliques. If you are playing commands, then I would suggest a filterland or two.
3 tec edges is IMO rather over. 1 of it can even be replaced with slayer's stronghold or moorland haunt for more utility.
2. I'd go with mana leak, since pierce only targets non-creature spells. Perhaps if you are concern about opponent countermagic, but we are playing a flash speed deck (except for geist), it is better to precisely pinpoint every phase in the game and time your spells to play around countermagic, or force them to counter things at the expense of losing their turn ("hehe, you just got time walked over"). But if you are afraid of T1 inquisition or thoughtseize, honestly I acknowledge I can't deal with that (without brainstorm) (if any one has a practical way of preventing t1 targeted discard, please share) and I wouldn't even bother anymore, aside from burn, targeted discard is extremely powerful in modern (perhaps even much more powerful than countermagic), it's hard to have any solid preventive measure against that, but we have a corrective measure (not perfect but better than nothing) and that is our cantrips (which is why I play 4 electrolyze and 4 remands) if they are not discarded, they can help to provide a chance to drawing into something I want post-discard. (ie. T1 inquisition discard geist, perhaps later a remand or electro helps me draw into another geist or the remands and electros may have draw off cards from the library that I draw another geist of the top, yeahyeah I know that's just a maybe, that's better than nothing)
I am sure we don't like Thrun. I guess against such a matchup without wrath, we have to speed up the aggression and start attacking the player relentlessly as soon as we can to take the opponent's life total down to burning zone, then finish it off with burn spells.
what do you mean by filterland? sorry for my ignorance >_> uhm, anyways, what about some kind of slayer's stronghold instead of the third tectonic edge main board?
Personally I use only 2 tec edges and I find that sufficient. Since you play 3, it may be a good idea to replace 1 of them with a slayer. I tried slayer before, and I found it a good tool against control and combo. Against control (especially blue based counter heavy decks), I flash in a tiago with no mana left or target to flashback, counter? (opponent thinks hmm he ain't flashing anything back, it's just a 2/1) Ok go. My turn, drop a slayer, battle and activate, "that's not just a 2/1 anymore, isn't it, hehe" Against Combo, casting a T2 tiago, then T3 onwards swing in with slayer greatly speeds up the clock against them, "looks like you have much lesser time to assemble your combo pieces yeah." But against creature heavy aggro, slayer is not going to really help you much, it does not increase toughness, so it ain't gonna protect geist (but eiganjo does). All in all, perhaps a singleton slayer could be worth a try, hope it works well for you
Hi iamghost, welcome to this thread, wolf here
Since you were playing UWR geist, I would presume that you may wanna try the geist version. Should you wish to try the geist version, I would like to highlight to you some notes first
- This deck is slower than UWR geist. It focus more establishing a firm control over the boardstate and then goes into near inevitable beatdown, rather than focusing on lifetotals. Therefore, it is considerably more on the controllish side and cannot steal games away by burning that UWR can. As a result, the difficulty level may be higher. Also, it has a harder matchup against RDW since it has no lightning helix to help mitigate burn.
- This deck simply just walks over goyf, almost any removal in this deck can kill goyf. Therefore, it is more resilient against goyf than UWR.
- I must say that based of my games, this deck has a favorable matchup against UWR. We have so many answers against them.
- This deck relies on recursion and discard (to selectively neg the opponent) to generate it's virtual CA. It has no card draw, the downside is that if you open with a subpar hand, you can't rely on drawing into better cards, on the other hand, due to this inherent drawback, you should seek to fill up this deck with strong independent spells, and so you would topdeck better.
- This deck has a stronger matchup against combo, due to its heavy disruption package that is made up of a combination of discard and counters.
- Creeping tarpits are within boltable range, but their cheaper activation cost and being unblockable, provides very solid inevitability.
- Liliana is a choice in this deck, you may prefer an instant speed sac spell like geth's verdict/devour flesh. I remembered I had a game against a rg tron player and he dropped an emrakul, he thought he was winning, then I responded with an instant speed geth's verdict, and he was just taken by surprise haha.
IMO you would need some practice with this deck, so I wouldn't really suggest it if you do not have much time left for the GPT. Jund Midrange would be a much safer choice but I am not sure if you have the goyfs and bobs. But if you have the cards readily available for this deck now, perhaps try out a few games and see how you feel about it. This deck is still developing, I would surely appreciate more inputs and feedback from you all
Yes, indeed I run a lot of spot removal in this deck. Even more so now, after the nerfing of storm and eggs. Interesting that modern is becoming a creature heavy format
I have a strange feeling and I could be wrong but it may be worth trying boros charm vs GW hatebears. Sometimes perhaps that 4 damage burn or double strike is all you need to win. Afterall, as I mentioned
IMO, Rest in peace would be one of the A-list graveyard hate unless if your opponent boards in enchantment hate. The way it troubles Melira Pod, Gifts Control, Vengevine etc. buys quite some time. And for this deck, having some time in favor of you often leads to a win.
Sideboarding-wise I am more incline to support this interesting idea of what I call "diversified" sideboarding (people can always call it something else), the idea is to have a set of cards that serve the same purpose but are of different types for which there is no overlapping hate against it (a simple example is for Artifact hate: Kataki, War's Wage is a legend creature, disenchant is an instant, stony silence is an enchantment). The reason for doing this, it's so that your opponent's would find it harder to sideboard against your sideboard, at the very least he would have no one card answer to deal with ALL your hate against him (ie. your opponent plays vengevine, your sideboard's graveyard hate package is 4 Rest in Peace, he guesses that and boards in 4 naturalize, and tada your sideboard didn't matter)
Wow good to know that a lot of activity is going on here
I can't say which is the way to go, unless someone can convince us of the way forward, I could be wrong for now but I guess as of now this is just a matter of risk appetite here, some of us (like me) prefer to lower the curve and the variance and prefer the implied versatility, some of us wouldn't mind raising that tolerance to allow for greater power. But perhaps this difference here can affect the strategy of the deck's game play. It would be logical to say that if you have so powerful high cost spells like commands and sphinx, you would be inclined to prefer that the game drags into midgame, from then on you would have a better chance of relative advantage in most matchups (with the exception of a few decks like GW Hatebears and Gifts Control etc.). However, if like my deck which packs in mainly cheaper effiicient spells, I guess I am relatively more "indifferent" to such an effect with the exception of having to survive the first 3 turns against faster decks. Such a difference can subconsciously affect the way we play, we just need to make sure that we are aware of it and it's implications on our tempo and on the matchups
VS Jund (Even)
I think that are 2 ways to play this game.
1. If we can resolve a geist, then it is time to play agressively. Make sure we can keep attacking with geist, protect him, clear his path and then steal the game away.
2. If we cannot resolve geist (don't have it in the hand / it got discarded), then the game becomes more subtle and it becomes a trading game. We would then have to time our spells very precisely and squeeze out as much value as possible to out-CA them and come out on top of the trading game. Goyf, Finks, Lili and in some builds souls are the main concerns. While electrolyzes help deal with souls, shaman and Bob, we must use that mana leak and path to exile wisely against finks, goyf and lili. And remember bolt that raging ravine before it declares attacks and becomes a 4/4. Work through every phase of the game very very thoughtfully. Use Tec edges very strategically, it can protect you from raging ravine / treetop village, and it can also help you to deny them the white mana to cast souls (if they play the souls version).
Postboard: Celestial Purge helps kill a resolved lili and Olivia. Rest in Peace may hurt your Tiago, but it hurts their goyf, shaman, finks and souls. Wraths can punish the Jund player for overextending. Sulfur Elemental may be a nice tech to flash in and kill souls while pumping your angel.
VS GW Hatebear (Even):
GW Hatebears is very powerful in the late game (thrun and sigarda etc. and hence they try to accel it offensively with hierarch), against them preboard, do not focus too much on the board state, direct your attention more to the opponent's life total, we need to go all out aggressive, start the beat down as early as we can(drop that T3 geist if you can, if you have ample burn spells then you can drop that tiago on T2, fight without hesitation), kill that mana dork (hierarch) and deny them the accel, burn the player if possible at every end of their turn if they pass the turn or you have enough mana to burn, then take it from the sky and beat them down with airstrikes (they lack flying blockers aside from sigarda etc.) and finish them off with more burn. You cannot be delayed, you cannot hesitate in this matchup, and you must keep dealing damage, so you can steal this game away.
Postboard: Wrath of God kills Thrun and Sigarda and punishes them for overextending. Boros Charm can be good here to speed up the kill, sometimes perhaps that 4 damage burn or double strike is all you need to win.
VS Tron (Slightly Favorable):
Play very aggressively in this matchup and try your very best to take the opponent's life total down to "burnable" range before they establish tron, then kill them off with burn. Eiganjo castle protects against RG trons Pyroclasm. Tec Edges may help you delay them, path deals with wurmcoil engine, counter that karn. Use manlands to play around Blue Trons counterspells. Attack relentlessly.
Postboard: Aven Mindcensor slow them down. Stony Silence denies their artifacts (ie. Batterskull, Mindslaver, O stone, map and eggs etc.) from activating. Sowing Salts/molten rain for more land hate. Pithing Needle seals Karn. Negates counters the Karn and Mindslaver. Boros Charm is good in this matchup to protect geist from o stone/pyroclasm, and increase damage output.
VS RDW (Unfavorable):
IMO I hate this matchup, they just senselessly keep trying to maximize the damage math everyturn. Lightning helix is important here to slow them down (but you gotta be careful of skullcrack). Hang on, slow them down as best as you can until they run out of gas, then they are just your's for the taking.
Postboard: You can say 4 Leyline of sanctity, if you have the SB space. Timely reinforcements is magical here (just play around that skull crack), Kor Firewalker is also nice to slow them down while keeping a protected from red blocker or attacker.
Ok, more to come
It is indeed true, that angel offers much more versatility to the deck, her combat tricks with geist is just beautiful.
It is indeed true that in UWR midrange, what we offer is a fair fight, thus it is hardly so that we have any overwhelming advantage over any matchup, and to win a fair fight we ought to play cautiously and try to squeeze out as much value as possible from every spell, also we must have a very good understanding of our opponent's decks to direct the pace of the game to their disadvantage.
GW Hatebears is very powerful in the late game (thrun and sigarda etc. and hence they try to accel it offensively with hierarch), against them preboard, do not focus too much on the board state, direct your attention more to the opponent's life total, we need to go all out aggressive, start the beat down as early as we can(drop that T3 geist if you can, if you have ample burn spells then you can drop that tiago on T2, fight without hesitation), kill that mana dork (hierarch) and deny them the accel, burn the player if possible at every end of their turn if they pass the turn or you have enough mana to burn, then take it from the sky and beat them down with airstrikes (they lack flying blockers aside from sigarda etc.) and finish them off with more burn to "STEAL" the game away from them (yes in some matchups we are thieves ;)). Here in the mid game resto angel helps to blink an attacking geist to push in the extra damage if they have landbase blockers. Also angel has the advantage of a "big butt", the 4 toughness protects her from bolt and various burn spells (from a general meta standpoint). Hence, IMO I think it would be necessary to run at least 2-3 of resto angels for her aerial combat ability, "big butt", blink for ETB recursion or to evade spot removal, combat tricks with geist.
All in all, on hindsight I believe the above mentioned aggressive line of play was why you found the matchup much easier when you were playing UWR delver (which is a faster and more aggressive UWR tempo deck with lower curve). And since the UWR deck you used is slightly more incline to the controllish side and slightly lacks the threat density, it is understandable that you would have been at a disadvantage when the games draws out too long (pass midgame) and the GW hatebear's relatively stronger late game card quality would overwhelm you. You cannot be delayed, you cannot hesitate in this matchup, and you must keep dealing damage, so you can steal this game away.
Overall I think the list is quite ok
I also think that your meta or rather your matchups seems rather aggro based (you mentioned of this GW aggro deck, that sounds interesting, can you share more about them? Is it GW hatebears? Or is it some other new brew?), that could be the main reason why mana leak was not so useful and cheap spot removal was much better, if your matchups were against tron, reanimator, jund, eggs, the mirror. delver etc. then you would find leaks to be of more use. So unless you are absolutely certain of walking into a heavy aggro meta, I would still suggest keeping at least 1-2 leaks mainboarded just in case. Electrolyze can be quite situational but at least it should able to hit most value creatures (ie. shaman, bob, tiago, clique, and most importantly lingering souls which can be quite an issue for geist unless if you have eiganjo ready etc.), but if you are walking into a meta with tons of loam lions and kird apes going around then yup it's not going to help you aside from shooting the player for 2 and drawing a card.
I don't run sculler in my geist version (since it is creature-light), but I do so in the deathrite shaman version. A lot of people say that shaman is a good card, and can be played in any BG deck, IMO that is not true, because people can easily just bolt/disfigure etc. it, IMO it should be played in decks with a lot of creatures that "needs to be dealt with", that way with the limited removal in the opponent's hand, he's gonna have a hard time thinking which to target (instead of easily just shooting a lonely shaman), Sculler helps to meet this objective, let's say there's such a scenario: opponent only has a bolt in hand, you got a liliana in the hand and a shaman and a sculler (that exiled maybe let's say tarmogoyf) on the board, your opponent is gonna be in the position of having to make a choice. Another very common example, is a shaman standing next to dark confidant, if your opponent has only 1 removal/ enough mana to only cast 1 removal then he's gonna have to choose.
Yes truly, T1 shaman/inquistion, T2 Sculler, T3 clique indeed sets up a lot of hand disruption. Cliques are good for also the flying 3/1 body, and sometimes simply taking away just 1 card from the opponent's could be all it takes to totally foil his gameplan.
Glad to know that this thread could be of some use to you
There are two versions here, one that uses geist which resembles more or UW/UWR, and the Shaman version which resembles more of jund. Both still have more room for refining.
I find obzedat an interesting idea, has it been working out well for you?
Exactly. I mean I am just making guess as to a few reasons why spell pierce would be run over mana leak. As you added, we have tiago to flashback, and we have cantrips to draw on, then discard should not really hurt us that much. So I would still suggest to Iamghost to run leaks over pierce.
Ok, that is game 2 and if you are so LUCKY to have it in your opening hand (yes, I repeat the word is lucky). Or perhaps you mb it. Cool story, very cool story~
IMO my suggestions (there can always be better ones from others)
1. 2 tec edges are enough, 1 eiganjo should be in to protect geist and cliques. If you are playing commands, then I would suggest a filterland or two.
3 tec edges is IMO rather over. 1 of it can even be replaced with slayer's stronghold or moorland haunt for more utility.
2. I'd go with mana leak, since pierce only targets non-creature spells. Perhaps if you are concern about opponent countermagic, but we are playing a flash speed deck (except for geist), it is better to precisely pinpoint every phase in the game and time your spells to play around countermagic, or force them to counter things at the expense of losing their turn ("hehe, you just got time walked over"). But if you are afraid of T1 inquisition or thoughtseize, honestly I acknowledge I can't deal with that (without brainstorm) (if any one has a practical way of preventing t1 targeted discard, please share) and I wouldn't even bother anymore, aside from burn, targeted discard is extremely powerful in modern (perhaps even much more powerful than countermagic), it's hard to have any solid preventive measure against that, but we have a corrective measure (not perfect but better than nothing) and that is our cantrips (which is why I play 4 electrolyze and 4 remands) if they are not discarded, they can help to provide a chance to drawing into something I want post-discard. (ie. T1 inquisition discard geist, perhaps later a remand or electro helps me draw into another geist or the remands and electros may have draw off cards from the library that I draw another geist of the top, yeahyeah I know that's just a maybe, that's better than nothing)
I am sure we don't like Thrun. I guess against such a matchup without wrath, we have to speed up the aggression and start attacking the player relentlessly as soon as we can to take the opponent's life total down to burning zone, then finish it off with burn spells.
Filterlands (ie. Mystic Gate, Twilight Mire)
Personally I use only 2 tec edges and I find that sufficient. Since you play 3, it may be a good idea to replace 1 of them with a slayer. I tried slayer before, and I found it a good tool against control and combo. Against control (especially blue based counter heavy decks), I flash in a tiago with no mana left or target to flashback, counter? (opponent thinks hmm he ain't flashing anything back, it's just a 2/1) Ok go. My turn, drop a slayer, battle and activate, "that's not just a 2/1 anymore, isn't it, hehe" Against Combo, casting a T2 tiago, then T3 onwards swing in with slayer greatly speeds up the clock against them, "looks like you have much lesser time to assemble your combo pieces yeah." But against creature heavy aggro, slayer is not going to really help you much, it does not increase toughness, so it ain't gonna protect geist (but eiganjo does). All in all, perhaps a singleton slayer could be worth a try, hope it works well for you