If you run 4 Ashiok, then Vaulting away 1 of them is irrelevant, or vaulting 2 for that matter. You have 4 in the deck and only need 1 to win.
Yes, the answer to poor interactions is obviously to tie up more slots with a less effective finisher.
And it's not irrelevant, it's less relevant. While that may seem like nitpicking, it's an important distinction. Now your opponent needs less resources to stop your wincon, you have to find another, and you have to recast it. It's not a bad card, I just think there are better finishers.
3/4 Monastery Siege for seeing extra cards and fueling delve and niche burn scenarios. Allowing for a more murderous cut/Dig Through Time based list.
2 Palace Siege for Wincon/Inevitable Lifegain.
1/2 Citadel Siege for protection against haste as well as forcing midrange to overextend
I like the sieges, but I don't think they'll be constructed playable. For one, the biggest danger for this deck is aggression. A lot of the siege abilities don't have immediate payoff, and you'll often wind up doing not-relevant-enough things until you're dead. Also, there's so much enchantment hate running around that you'd basically be walking into answers that are already in the board for other decks (such as whip).
I don't like Divination. Being sorcery speed is a big problem. It's an alright card later on in the game, because it's cheap, but at that point I'd rather just pay more to draw more.
I've liked 3 Dig and 3 Ingenuity so far, but I've debated going to 4 Dig and 2 Ingenuity. Having multiple Ingenuity in hand is a lot worse than multiple Dig, and Dig being able to find what you need right then and there is huge.
6 draw spells should be plenty, btw. 7 max.
Also, it's worth noting that Vault + Walkers is a maaaajor nonbo, so you may want to consider having a non-walker finisher like Pearl Lake. Oh, and his ability to bounce back radiant fountains for you to play again is strangely relevant at times.
If you look at the current meta, beyond the control deck we are currently discussing (which was fringe in the last expansion), most winning decks are either 1)fast decks, i.e. monored, etc. or 2)midrange decks...all those decks use creatures, so in that vein, i'd say that Ashiok is almost a must have...yeah she's awkward if you're playing mirror or a walker deck...but I assure you...if you tick her up a few times your opponent WILL WANT TO DEAL WITH HER...if there isn't a way to kill her with a spell, you'll end up seeing her take combat damage, which honestly is perhaps the best function of the card...she stalls combat and direct damage from you to her/it, which buys you time to extend the game...I always am confused why people are so against this card...in my testing she's either awesome main board or at LEAST a sideboard.
I played Sidisi Whip last format with a loooot of local success, all the while having 2 Ashiok mained and 1 in the board. I've argued many times for the Walker and I would never underestimate her (it's a chick, right? lol), but I just don't feel she's right for this deck. She was good in Sidisi Whip for 2 primary reasons: 1. Attacking on so many fronts (creatures, whip, and Ashiok) is very difficult to deal with. Even if you stem the bleeding in one area, you're still in a lot of trouble. And 2. Sidisi Whip was extraordinary at creating stalled board states, which made it very easy to protect Ashiok, shy of a Downfall (and let's be real, that deck has plenty of things that just need to be killed).
I tried her in this control deck initially as a way to primarily soak up damage, and secondarily a pseudo wincon, and I was just not impressed. She comes down early, but I'm often wanting to control the board at that time. I don't need to soak up damage if they just don't have threats. The bigger factor, however, was that she's not a realistic clock.
I think my favorite part about her was that she'd steal much needed pieces from control decks or combo(ish) decks (I'm looking at you, Jeskai Tokens), but that's just not as big of a worry playing as UB Control. For the mainboard, I would just much rather spend the slot on more reliable, quicker finishers.
As far as the sideboard goes, I think the only thing I would want her in against is some sort of control mirror, but I think Ugin accomplishes the "impossible to kill" walker role just fine. The bigger problem there is that it's very difficult to cast him with countermagic up, but I put Tasigur in the board for the mirror. Odds are they've boarded a large amount of their removal out. Boarding Tasigur in, I have another wincon that can hit the board pretty quick and I have a way to recur value. If there is a significant rise in control decks, I could see myself squeezing in 2-3 in the board (probably 2), but as it stands, she doesn't do enough against the aggro decks, and I should already be running over the midrange decks.
Nullify hasn't proved to be bad, yet. I think it's nice to be able to stop things that you don't have the right removal to kill at times, and I imagine we'll be seeing a lot of haste. It counters things early that I can't kill and, at best, time walks the opponent later on in the game. It's a nice insurance policy. If I found something better to fit the slot, however, I'm open to switching it out.
The reason why I prefer Disdainful Stroke over Negate is because Crux of Fate makes answering Stormbreath Dragon even more important.
There are a slew of answers to Dragon, though. For one, it's totally viable that he could just be countered outright (between Dissolve and Nullify), but there are also 4 Downfalls in the deck. Barring that, that's why I have Cuts and Vaults in the board. Ideally, I've kept up with their earlier drops and answering Dragon isn't at the cost of succumbing to existent pressure, as the deck is designed to keep the buildup of pressure to a minimum.
So, since I saw Ugin and Crux I felt like UB could be very strong this format. I built a list, tested it, and found that early game pressure was the main thing that was getting me. The next day SCG came out with a vs video between Brad and Todd and it seemed like Todd was running into the same problem. I adjusted my list and so far it has worked fantastically. I think there's still a lot of testing to be done, though. This is what I have thus far:
I'm open to cutting the Thoughtseize, since there's likely to be quite a rise in the popularity of hyper aggressive decks, but I think it may very well be fine for game 1.
Last week I had a draft where I opened a Sidisi pack 1. Upon seeing Sultai was pretty open, I started that as my plan.
Pack 2 I opened a Rhino. Naturally, we have to go four color now. We can splash white pretty easily.
Pack 3 I opened a Clever Impersonator.
I even ran dutiful return to recur Rhino and the like. The number of times I double Rhino'd people was glorious.
So, my (competitive) league has decided to ban blue entirely. I want to show them why that is ridiculous. Who are the best generals for 2v2 in a format where nothing blue can be played?
Also, we can't use mass land destruction or infinite combos (as vague as that is).
First time around I got Dimir (played Esper). Lost first round to the nuts (2 Aurelia, Assemble the Legion, 2 Firemane. I mean, c'mon). Second round I played a guy who was very new to the game. First game I stomped him, but he dropped like 3 counters, so I was well aware of them for game 2. I, for some reason, had been having a serious problem with mana screw the whole day (including FNM. My decks were built perfectly fine, it was just one of those days), so I put in 18 lands. Drew 4 in my opening hand. Figured it was a blessing and kept. I played mindgrind earlier than I wanted, for 4, because he was tapped out at the time. We exchanged removal here and there and I milled him for a bit. During this time, I proceeded to draw lands consecutively, and ended up with THIRTEEN of my eighteen lands. Thankfully this player didn't seem to understand alpha striking terribly well, and failed to put pressure on me. I got an Undercity Informer on the field and proceeded to rip into guys to play, block his 3454303/3454303 Consuming Aberration, and sac to mill for a land. He's left with 7 cards in his deck and I'm about to lose. Draw a creature. Cast the creature. Pay, sac, mill. Guy has 4 cards left in deck. Have informer sac himself. The guy's last land is the last card in his deck. I win the match. Best. Win. Ever.
Second time around I got Boros and played Naya. So dumb. So so dumb. lol Stomped all the way to the top. Dimir was more fun, imo, but I figured I should probably make up for the night before. ^^"
Yes, the answer to poor interactions is obviously to tie up more slots with a less effective finisher.
And it's not irrelevant, it's less relevant. While that may seem like nitpicking, it's an important distinction. Now your opponent needs less resources to stop your wincon, you have to find another, and you have to recast it. It's not a bad card, I just think there are better finishers.
I like the sieges, but I don't think they'll be constructed playable. For one, the biggest danger for this deck is aggression. A lot of the siege abilities don't have immediate payoff, and you'll often wind up doing not-relevant-enough things until you're dead. Also, there's so much enchantment hate running around that you'd basically be walking into answers that are already in the board for other decks (such as whip).
I don't like Divination. Being sorcery speed is a big problem. It's an alright card later on in the game, because it's cheap, but at that point I'd rather just pay more to draw more.
I've liked 3 Dig and 3 Ingenuity so far, but I've debated going to 4 Dig and 2 Ingenuity. Having multiple Ingenuity in hand is a lot worse than multiple Dig, and Dig being able to find what you need right then and there is huge.
6 draw spells should be plenty, btw. 7 max.
Also, it's worth noting that Vault + Walkers is a maaaajor nonbo, so you may want to consider having a non-walker finisher like Pearl Lake. Oh, and his ability to bounce back radiant fountains for you to play again is strangely relevant at times.
I played Sidisi Whip last format with a loooot of local success, all the while having 2 Ashiok mained and 1 in the board. I've argued many times for the Walker and I would never underestimate her (it's a chick, right? lol), but I just don't feel she's right for this deck. She was good in Sidisi Whip for 2 primary reasons: 1. Attacking on so many fronts (creatures, whip, and Ashiok) is very difficult to deal with. Even if you stem the bleeding in one area, you're still in a lot of trouble. And 2. Sidisi Whip was extraordinary at creating stalled board states, which made it very easy to protect Ashiok, shy of a Downfall (and let's be real, that deck has plenty of things that just need to be killed).
I tried her in this control deck initially as a way to primarily soak up damage, and secondarily a pseudo wincon, and I was just not impressed. She comes down early, but I'm often wanting to control the board at that time. I don't need to soak up damage if they just don't have threats. The bigger factor, however, was that she's not a realistic clock.
I think my favorite part about her was that she'd steal much needed pieces from control decks or combo(ish) decks (I'm looking at you, Jeskai Tokens), but that's just not as big of a worry playing as UB Control. For the mainboard, I would just much rather spend the slot on more reliable, quicker finishers.
As far as the sideboard goes, I think the only thing I would want her in against is some sort of control mirror, but I think Ugin accomplishes the "impossible to kill" walker role just fine. The bigger problem there is that it's very difficult to cast him with countermagic up, but I put Tasigur in the board for the mirror. Odds are they've boarded a large amount of their removal out. Boarding Tasigur in, I have another wincon that can hit the board pretty quick and I have a way to recur value. If there is a significant rise in control decks, I could see myself squeezing in 2-3 in the board (probably 2), but as it stands, she doesn't do enough against the aggro decks, and I should already be running over the midrange decks.
Nullify hasn't proved to be bad, yet. I think it's nice to be able to stop things that you don't have the right removal to kill at times, and I imagine we'll be seeing a lot of haste. It counters things early that I can't kill and, at best, time walks the opponent later on in the game. It's a nice insurance policy. If I found something better to fit the slot, however, I'm open to switching it out.
There are a slew of answers to Dragon, though. For one, it's totally viable that he could just be countered outright (between Dissolve and Nullify), but there are also 4 Downfalls in the deck. Barring that, that's why I have Cuts and Vaults in the board. Ideally, I've kept up with their earlier drops and answering Dragon isn't at the cost of succumbing to existent pressure, as the deck is designed to keep the buildup of pressure to a minimum.
3 Thoughtseize
4 Bile Blight
3 Nullify
3 Drown in Sorrow
4 Dissolve
4 Hero's Downfall
3 Crux of Fate
3 Jace's Ingenuity
3 Dig Through Time
4 Dismal Backwater
2 Radiant Fountain
4 Polluted Delta
5 Swamp
5 Island
4 Temple of Deceipt
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
2 Opulant Palace
I'm open to cutting the Thoughtseize, since there's likely to be quite a rise in the popularity of hyper aggressive decks, but I think it may very well be fine for game 1.
The sideboard I was contemplating was
4 Negate
2 Perilous Vault
1 Drown in Sorrow
2 Murderous Cut
1 Dig Through Time
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
3 Jorubai Murk Lurker
I haven't tested the board, but I feel like it covers my bases pretty well. Might cut a Murderous Cut for another Crux of Fate.
Pack 2 I opened a Rhino. Naturally, we have to go four color now. We can splash white pretty easily.
Pack 3 I opened a Clever Impersonator.
I even ran dutiful return to recur Rhino and the like. The number of times I double Rhino'd people was glorious.
Also, we can't use mass land destruction or infinite combos (as vague as that is).
Second time around I got Boros and played Naya. So dumb. So so dumb. lol Stomped all the way to the top. Dimir was more fun, imo, but I figured I should probably make up for the night before. ^^"