Without LotV, there are no XBB costed cards. That’s why the missing “maybe” is significant.
On language:
Even if the Oxford English Dictionary had an mtg section, it wouldn’t matter because dictionaries aren’t lexical rulebooks; they document popular uses of words(ex: widespread misuse of “literal” led to a new definition being added several years ago). It’s not like it’s publically-visible, but you’re talking down to someone about the game’s basics, who has been playing for over two decades. I know the terminology because I’ve been on the groundfloor of its development for quite some time. “Fish” used to mean a disruptive blue-based weenie deck exclusively; since Lorwyn, it’s most common use refers to “merfolk”(I could go on with examples).
If you want “splash” to mean more than a small amount of another colour, that’s your business, but save the pedantry for private messages. Also,
if I made a UWb list, this isn’t the thread where I’d share it.
Cliques are good if not slightly better with jtms, ostensibly; protecting your own and pressuring the opponents...
Why would Clique be less good? They already were good before, so unless you needed the money for bills, selling them would be a puzzling move to start with.
I’m not sold on miracles with the 4 jtms 4 opt 3 serum visions 2 azcanta setup that I tried with 4 terminus; out of three matches, terminus never got miracled in a timely fashion. I could’ve been trying more miracles, but a few entreats wouldn’t have really helped against the go wide strategies that terminus needs be getting flipped with.
With lingering souls being bad right now; I’d like that to be explained a bit more.
I don’t disagree per se, so there’s no need to be defensive—it just seems like a claim that needs more of an explanation...like, is it bad online only? What matches is it bad in? etc etc
A black splash for push, linger, maybe, Lilly of the Veil, and 1cc discard, and sb options, like anguished undoing seems kind of enticing to me.
Intuitions alone are not valid, nor intelligent regardless of whether they turn out to be correct.
If someone is so convinced, they should keep it quiet, test the card and figure out what's going to make it degenerate.
...
It drives me crazy how people will share their intuitions immediately, rather than asking themselves "why?" a few times and bringing something more useful/intelligent to the table.
Wow, great debate technique, going straight for the "Because your initial reaction is different than mine, you're unintelligent" angle - multiple times, even!
My reasoning (and I am capable of reasoning, thankyouverymuch, can you please try to keep the future responses on the topic of THE TOPIC and not insulting the intelligence of people who dare disagree with you?) is that:
a) They don't seem to like allowing too many 1-cost cantrips in Modern. As a result, I think they will pare the field by one. It might be Opt, it might be Serum Visions, it might even be Sleight of Hand, but I don't think they will want all of them to exist at once.
and
b) They've stated repeatedly they test and release cards almost entirely for standard and limited, and they let bans take care of things that ruffle older formats. This was most recently demonstrated with Treasure Cruise and Dig Through Time. As such I don't believe they'd necessarily be adverse to banning Opt even fresh off its printing.
We obviously disagree, and I really don't expect to change your mind. But I do expect the decorum of you to accept that others can have different opinions than you do, actually have done the reasoning behind their opinion, and deserve better discussion then "You didn't think, you have no intelligence!", which was the nuts and bolts of your reaction above. Good day.
There's actually an argument in there that you are glossing-over. It was generally directed at comments that have been reactions where a ban is predicted without other substance, nor explanation. That is unintelligent and the people who waste space with those types of posts are probably unaware of this. Merely pointing something out is not an insult.
Second, what you omitted was highly relevant to your rebuttal and shows that you're talking past me, rather than being in discussion. You seem invested in an opinion, which is silly considering mtg is the topic, but you can't let that get in the way of understanding what others are saying: test Opt yourself and see if it actually is that good. Hell, you can get a free program to test in combo decks where you go-off. Are you trying to justify not testing it? Then make a point of actually saying so.
Gesturing to the R & D team's past statements is not substantiate a prediction because it still begs the obvious of question of what will necessitate the ban, which is why the part of my comment that you seem to ignore is what you should be replying to, since it is actually my opinion regarding Opt being banned that is your concern(?). Thus, we are led cull-circle; what's gonna break Opt or somehow necessitate its ban? There was something on the wotc site a while back about Modern becoming more of a consideration for new sets, so that's probably worth reading.
The nonsense about Opt being banned in Mmodern is ridiculous. Some just seem to be reacting with the prospect of a ban as the starting point for their thinking without then considering why it will be banned. All we're seeing is the first stage of the process. Intuitions alone are not valid, nor intelligent regardless of whether they turn out to be correct.
If someone is so convinced, they should keep it quiet, test the card and figure out what's going to make it degenerate.
For the matter of Opt, I actually played with it in various formats over the last seventeen years. It's a fine card, but its not that good and if it does anything broken, it will probably be giving too much redundancy to a deck. Assuming that, the next question begged is whether it will be that broken and if one of the cards that are part of the combo that it assembles won't get banned instead.
From there, we're led back to the question of what's going to make it ban-worthy. Personally, I don't think it will push any existing Modern deck over the top. It is nice for Storm, but it won't be that good. One of the biggest potential winners are Ux decks because its less clunky than Serum Visions and yields more opportunities for getting value out of snapcasters. In general, unless a deck needs more cantrips or ones that are instant speed, Opt is unlikely to replace Serum Visions.
It drives me crazy how people will share their intuitions immediately, rather than asking themselves "why?" a few times and bringing something more useful/intelligent to the table.
I searched it first and it seems like it has been a while since this topic has come up here. I have played both cards a lot over the years, but have mostly stuck to Serum Visions over the other. One of the few times that I actually played Sleight of Hand in Modern in a deck other than Storm was a grixis control deck that abused flip-Jace, where they were extra Serum Visions copies.
Something that I learned from experience in formats other than Modern is that card-selection is highly relevant when in a deck with lots of shuffle effects.
In particular situations and decks, Serum Visions is undoubtedly a bit stronger, but it is worth considering that it is a turn before scrying pays off, which devalues it considerably if fetches start getting involved.
While it goes against habit, I'm going to be trying Sleight of Hand in Snapcaster decks more often in decks where I find myself wasting the scrying on Serum Visions...URW Spell Queller Control is a current example.
While I understand the appeal of borderposts, flip-jaces and myths, they do not seem good in the deck. I've been fiddling with builds that are similar to the one or two that 5-0'd mtgo leagues; my biggest struggle has been clunky starts and flooding out with lands and irrelevant cards.
For reference, here's the list that mine is based on:
Being a uw control deck that uses 1-2 copies of Balance to lock up the game, negate opp's land advantage from early paths and/or wrath works better than going all-in on the Balance plan because there are too many decks that will either recover or do enough leading up to it being cast. One of this build's strengths is that it is virtually creatureless, which blanks opposing removal and guarantees balance will clear out creatures...flip-jace is powerful and I am sympathetic to the desire to use Myth Realized, but their inclusion seems like a lateral move concerning the potential strengths of using As Foretold in UW control in a format where Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile and/or Fatal Push are in 2 out of 3 matches. Borderposts are also less than ideal because stony silence is one of the reasons to play a deck with white in it.
Besides being a UB and piloted by someone other than Osmanozguney(sp?), what catches my eye is Rune Snag. I recall playing them while Standard-legal and they were often more or less vanilla counters. Modern's a different beast though, so I've not wanted to risk trying them, though I've wondered. Panoma was enterprising and it paid off apparently.
I like Rest in Peace and Stony Silence too much to switch to stop playing UWx, so this raises interesting questions: did Rune Snag work for this build because it runs Leylines and doesn't need to bank on late-game permission wars happening in the matches where opposing GY comes into the picture?
There's plenty else about the deck to discuss though...Ashiok seems kinda spicy, right?
No synergy with narset, only gets one card off the top, doesn't sequence well with all the 1cc spell on turn two...why run wall over serum visions again?
With the explosion of Death's Shadow decks, I would wager that running 4 esper charms could be good since decks like that dump their hands fast, but usually sandbag a card or two along the way.
Lilly is an absurdly powerful card, but more removal would be fine. Such changes could even be arguably better depending on your play style and meta. Just be mindful of what purposes LotV serves in the first and probably second games; some examples are: edict for bogles/infect, wincon vs blue-based control and general lightning rod.
Make sure you cover your bases well enough and a reprint may not matter. I've been using LotVs since they were printed and they're only that good in particular decks...we're talking formats too. I'm skeptical that Esper Transcendent exploits them as effectively as other decks.
The bigger context for this opinion is important, I suppose: the deck can be clunky, so avoiding cards like LotV and going deeper into draw/filter/cheap or flexible removal is one way to curb that. LotV is a card that you need to pull ahead with in some way, which is why Jund uses them so effectively due to their aggro plan. With UWB Transcendent, if you're on your heels vs. some kind of linear aggro deck, a 1BB sorcery-speed edict(ideally soaks up some kind of other dmg.)is often not great.
Think twice is probably not what you're after. Serum Visions is basically the best option. I've tried: Anticipate, Ancestral Vision, Sleight of Hand, Think Twice, Serum Vision, Gitaxian Probe, Izzet Charm and am probably forgetting a few.
If you're not casting serum visions after turn one, you're either not being honest, extremely lucky, not playing the deck enough or something because it is a rather helpful card in many situations where you just need some kind of business.
The singletons of spell pierce and snare are interesting. I understand that charm overlaps with pierce a bit, but the single snare is not appealing to me. With so many recent decks to beat from GPs and SCG Regionals showcasing the power of 1cc discard and goyfs, plus tron, I think there could be some argument for running 2 Spell Pierce 2 Spell Snare in a 60.
What I've tried and always disliked is the two Serum Visions thing. Multiple rounds of Affinity, Jund Shadow, Abzan, all the Tron flavours, infect and/or misc. combo will eventually punish only having two cards that can look three deep for land. Besides hitting four lands by the fourth turn to keep up with well-sequenced aggro plays(e.g: helix+bolt+path, etc), getting to 6 or 7 lands in a reasonable amount of time is also key for stuff like Abzan, Jund(activating colonnade and playing spell) and even Blue Tron(counter-wars over burn).
2 Serum Visions is from old Team Geist builds that had serious issues with variance--this is from watching some very sad streams and personal experiences with the deck at multiple events. When everything happens according to plan, you're invincible, then lose the same match a few rounds later from not drawing enough of a particular card(be it land, threat, burn, removal or counter).
My point is that if your own results(practice matches and meaningful ones) tell you that two visions is sufficient, go with that, but if you start wondering where your seemingly unluckily close losses are coming, I'd start looking at massaging another copy of serum visions and maybe a few other cantrips into your build.
The theory behind serum visions, as I understand it, is that if you expect matches all night where you need to hit your first four land drops on time, they'll be good.
On the other hand, if you suspect that you'll be trading one-for-one and are comfortable not hitting your fourth land drop on time, or mulling perfectly, then serum visions won't be necessary.
Personally, I like serum visions no matter what because I hate having to put all my faith into mulling and remand/electrolyze for finding lands and sideboard cards, like Stony Silence.
On language:
Even if the Oxford English Dictionary had an mtg section, it wouldn’t matter because dictionaries aren’t lexical rulebooks; they document popular uses of words(ex: widespread misuse of “literal” led to a new definition being added several years ago). It’s not like it’s publically-visible, but you’re talking down to someone about the game’s basics, who has been playing for over two decades. I know the terminology because I’ve been on the groundfloor of its development for quite some time. “Fish” used to mean a disruptive blue-based weenie deck exclusively; since Lorwyn, it’s most common use refers to “merfolk”(I could go on with examples).
If you want “splash” to mean more than a small amount of another colour, that’s your business, but save the pedantry for private messages. Also,
if I made a UWb list, this isn’t the thread where I’d share it.
Was there something more significant that you mean to add to the discussion that I missed or you left out?
Why would Clique be less good? They already were good before, so unless you needed the money for bills, selling them would be a puzzling move to start with.
With lingering souls being bad right now; I’d like that to be explained a bit more.
I don’t disagree per se, so there’s no need to be defensive—it just seems like a claim that needs more of an explanation...like, is it bad online only? What matches is it bad in? etc etc
A black splash for push, linger, maybe, Lilly of the Veil, and 1cc discard, and sb options, like anguished undoing seems kind of enticing to me.
There's actually an argument in there that you are glossing-over. It was generally directed at comments that have been reactions where a ban is predicted without other substance, nor explanation. That is unintelligent and the people who waste space with those types of posts are probably unaware of this. Merely pointing something out is not an insult.
Second, what you omitted was highly relevant to your rebuttal and shows that you're talking past me, rather than being in discussion. You seem invested in an opinion, which is silly considering mtg is the topic, but you can't let that get in the way of understanding what others are saying: test Opt yourself and see if it actually is that good. Hell, you can get a free program to test in combo decks where you go-off. Are you trying to justify not testing it? Then make a point of actually saying so.
Gesturing to the R & D team's past statements is not substantiate a prediction because it still begs the obvious of question of what will necessitate the ban, which is why the part of my comment that you seem to ignore is what you should be replying to, since it is actually my opinion regarding Opt being banned that is your concern(?). Thus, we are led cull-circle; what's gonna break Opt or somehow necessitate its ban? There was something on the wotc site a while back about Modern becoming more of a consideration for new sets, so that's probably worth reading.
If someone is so convinced, they should keep it quiet, test the card and figure out what's going to make it degenerate.
For the matter of Opt, I actually played with it in various formats over the last seventeen years. It's a fine card, but its not that good and if it does anything broken, it will probably be giving too much redundancy to a deck. Assuming that, the next question begged is whether it will be that broken and if one of the cards that are part of the combo that it assembles won't get banned instead.
From there, we're led back to the question of what's going to make it ban-worthy. Personally, I don't think it will push any existing Modern deck over the top. It is nice for Storm, but it won't be that good. One of the biggest potential winners are Ux decks because its less clunky than Serum Visions and yields more opportunities for getting value out of snapcasters. In general, unless a deck needs more cantrips or ones that are instant speed, Opt is unlikely to replace Serum Visions.
It drives me crazy how people will share their intuitions immediately, rather than asking themselves "why?" a few times and bringing something more useful/intelligent to the table.
Something that I learned from experience in formats other than Modern is that card-selection is highly relevant when in a deck with lots of shuffle effects.
In particular situations and decks, Serum Visions is undoubtedly a bit stronger, but it is worth considering that it is a turn before scrying pays off, which devalues it considerably if fetches start getting involved.
While it goes against habit, I'm going to be trying Sleight of Hand in Snapcaster decks more often in decks where I find myself wasting the scrying on Serum Visions...URW Spell Queller Control is a current example.
For reference, here's the list that mine is based on:
3 Celestial Colonnade
4 Flooded Strand
2 Ghost Quarter
2 Glacial Fortress
2 Hallowed Fountain
3 Island
2 Mystic Gate
3 Plains
1 Tectonic Edge
3 Tolaria West
2 CREATURES
2 Snapcaster Mage
23 INSTANTS and SORC.
4 Ancestral Vision
2 Censor
3 Cryptic Command
1 Negate
4 Path to Exile
1 Restore Balance
2 Spell Snare
2 Supreme Verdict
10 OTHER SPELLS
3 As Foretold
1 Crucible of Worlds
2 Detention Sphere
1 Elspeth, Sun's Champion
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Gideon Jura
1 Jace, Architect of Thought
1 Blessed Alliance
1 Dispel
2 Kitchen Finks
2 Meddling Mage
2 Negate
3 Rest in Peace
1 Spell Queller
1 Stony Silence
1 Supreme Verdict
1 Vendilion Clique
Being a uw control deck that uses 1-2 copies of Balance to lock up the game, negate opp's land advantage from early paths and/or wrath works better than going all-in on the Balance plan because there are too many decks that will either recover or do enough leading up to it being cast. One of this build's strengths is that it is virtually creatureless, which blanks opposing removal and guarantees balance will clear out creatures...flip-jace is powerful and I am sympathetic to the desire to use Myth Realized, but their inclusion seems like a lateral move concerning the potential strengths of using As Foretold in UW control in a format where Lightning Bolt, Path to Exile and/or Fatal Push are in 2 out of 3 matches. Borderposts are also less than ideal because stony silence is one of the reasons to play a deck with white in it.
This caught my attention this morning:
Panoma (5-0)
2 Jace, Architect of Thought
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Grave Titan
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Damnation
4 Serum Visions
2 Cryptic Command
4 Fatal Push
1 Go for the Throat
4 Rune Snag
4 Spreading Seas
1 Bloodstained Mire
3 Creeping Tar Pit
2 Darkslick Shores
2 Flooded Strand
3 Island
4 Polluted Delta
3 Swamp
4 Tectonic Edge
2 Watery Grave
Sideboard
2 Dispel
4 Leyline of the Void
2 Negate
2 Ratchet Bomb
2 Vendilion Clique
Besides being a UB and piloted by someone other than Osmanozguney(sp?), what catches my eye is Rune Snag. I recall playing them while Standard-legal and they were often more or less vanilla counters. Modern's a different beast though, so I've not wanted to risk trying them, though I've wondered. Panoma was enterprising and it paid off apparently.
I like Rest in Peace and Stony Silence too much to switch to stop playing UWx, so this raises interesting questions: did Rune Snag work for this build because it runs Leylines and doesn't need to bank on late-game permission wars happening in the matches where opposing GY comes into the picture?
There's plenty else about the deck to discuss though...Ashiok seems kinda spicy, right?
Anyway, enjoy the tech and ensuing discussions.
Make sure you cover your bases well enough and a reprint may not matter. I've been using LotVs since they were printed and they're only that good in particular decks...we're talking formats too. I'm skeptical that Esper Transcendent exploits them as effectively as other decks.
The bigger context for this opinion is important, I suppose: the deck can be clunky, so avoiding cards like LotV and going deeper into draw/filter/cheap or flexible removal is one way to curb that. LotV is a card that you need to pull ahead with in some way, which is why Jund uses them so effectively due to their aggro plan. With UWB Transcendent, if you're on your heels vs. some kind of linear aggro deck, a 1BB sorcery-speed edict(ideally soaks up some kind of other dmg.)is often not great.
If you're not casting serum visions after turn one, you're either not being honest, extremely lucky, not playing the deck enough or something because it is a rather helpful card in many situations where you just need some kind of business.
What I've tried and always disliked is the two Serum Visions thing. Multiple rounds of Affinity, Jund Shadow, Abzan, all the Tron flavours, infect and/or misc. combo will eventually punish only having two cards that can look three deep for land. Besides hitting four lands by the fourth turn to keep up with well-sequenced aggro plays(e.g: helix+bolt+path, etc), getting to 6 or 7 lands in a reasonable amount of time is also key for stuff like Abzan, Jund(activating colonnade and playing spell) and even Blue Tron(counter-wars over burn).
2 Serum Visions is from old Team Geist builds that had serious issues with variance--this is from watching some very sad streams and personal experiences with the deck at multiple events. When everything happens according to plan, you're invincible, then lose the same match a few rounds later from not drawing enough of a particular card(be it land, threat, burn, removal or counter).
My point is that if your own results(practice matches and meaningful ones) tell you that two visions is sufficient, go with that, but if you start wondering where your seemingly unluckily close losses are coming, I'd start looking at massaging another copy of serum visions and maybe a few other cantrips into your build.
On the other hand, if you suspect that you'll be trading one-for-one and are comfortable not hitting your fourth land drop on time, or mulling perfectly, then serum visions won't be necessary.
Personally, I like serum visions no matter what because I hate having to put all my faith into mulling and remand/electrolyze for finding lands and sideboard cards, like Stony Silence.