**+1 spellbomb, -1 thoughtseize to sideboard**
I feel like I sideboard thoughtseizes out of my deck a looot, and spellbomb is a relatively low cost inclusion to hedge against the multitude of grave decks. How often do you all sideboard out thoughtseize? Like 2/3 of matches like I do nowadays?
**4 trophy, 0 pulse, 0 decay**
I wanted to hedge a bit against tron since moving from Rock means losing FoR. It may be in vain, and if so maybe I want 3 trophy-1 decay, but I feel pretty strongly that pulse is too slow in modern nowadays for a removal spell. It’s almost always tempo negative which can leave you very behind on board. Any thoughts?
**1 LtLH, 1 kcommand vs 2kcommabd**
I went with the first LtLH over a second kcommand simply because I feel like BBE into a Liliana planeswalker is such a powerful play, even more powerful than BBE->kcommand. Also without pulse, I’m kind of weak to tokens. The drawback of course is that I’m down a burn spell that can help close out a game. How do you all feel about maindeck LtLH vs kcommand at the 3cmc slot?
To rephrase my original statement, I don't think you want to be playing too fair in Modern right now.
That’s probably accurate, and I think that may have been true for a long time honestly. But it seems like shadow decks fit into what I’d call ‘fair’ relative to the rest of modern, and they’re doing relatively ok in the current meta. That kinda leads me to wonder what the difference is between their deck and ours on a very fundamental level, and whether we can benefit from said knowledge to make Rock more competitive.
The most obvious answers to me seem to be that they can turn the corner very quickly and that their decks are hyper mana-efficient. Clock speed may not be replicable without playing shadow, but I feel like lowering our cmc is certainly a possibility.
I do think the mulligan change will be net negative for Rock since it’s not a deck that needs to mulligan too much. That basically makes every other deck better while Rock stays roughly the same. With that said, I don’t think it’s a huge deal, and maybe it could be a net positive if people get into the habit of aggressively mulliganing into hands vulnerable to discard.
Either way, it’s only a rule in testing so far. If it’s a really bad rule change for fair modern decks, they probably won’t implement it (tho I hope it passes the test, cause anything to minimize the impact of mulliganing sounds great to me).
I mean I suppose, but by that logic TiTi, deaths shadow, and gurmag angler are cards that don’t impact the game state and are therefore bad in modern which seems to be clearly not the case. I think playing a creature that swings combat math in your favor counts for something, it just depends on how much mana you have to spend to do so.
Blast zone does seem strong, and maybe I should give it serious thought since I’m playing traverse the ulvenwald.
@whocansay
You’re not wrong, but I feel like almost everything in BG meets the criteria of immediately impacting the game state in a meaningful way, no?
One problem I think I can identify (and maybe this is also what you’re alluding to) is over-paying for effects. To quote Gerry Thompson from some tournament commentary, ‘the number of spells you cast in a match of modern is highly correlated with winrate’.
Considering how many powerful cheap cards are in modern now, it seems like it should be possible to build a strong midrange deck with a very low curve (like basically topping at 3-4 mana and even then only for cards that can end games). If I may identify some spells that I think are especially clunky in BG nowadays: maelstrom pulse, 2nd kalitas, Nissa vital force, vraska sad as I am to admit it, 4th LotV, 3rd tracker, and EE given how much less flexibility it has in a two color deck. BG feels very powerful when you draw a bunch of cheap interaction or a mix of cheap interaction with top end, but feels rancid when your opener is all cmc 3+.
46% winrate is pretty sad, and we’re second to last in the pecking order of decks with significant meta %. The sad thing is that other metagame anaylsis I’ve seen recently corroborates these numbers which says to me that BG midrange (and jund) are just not great decks in modern. Maybe there’s a problem with the way we approach deck building (I wish it were that easy) or perhaps more likely, playing midrange in modern is a losing battle.
So I think maybe I have a solution to my previous problem and I’d like to field (no pun intended) your opinions on it. My tentative solution is to play a tiny traverse package.
Edit:
Played the above list at modern night today, went 2-1-1 though I think I was about to pull away from Martyr-Emeria in game 3 except for the clock. I’m counting that as a 3-1 Wins were against Sultai Wilderness Rec and Red-Green big things, loss was to 8rack.
Traverse was excellent every time I drew it. I don’t think more than 1 is good though; delirium isn’t a given and more traverse means more graveyard reliance. The baubles were just fine, maybe even good.
The sideboard is basically the same as it was before I made these maindeck changes, so it’s probably suboptimal right now. I’ll spoiler out the superfluous thoughts from the original post when I
I really like this configuration in theory, but I’m not sure how good it is in practice.
If I can reliably enable delirium, I think this deck has enough tools in the form of creatures and lands that traverse becomes quite insane. Tracker, goyf, kalitas, scooze, and FoR all strike me as very powerful tutor targets that could be key in locking up a game (Bob too, though I don’t imagine traversing until turn 4 or 5 at which point Bob is a lot less good). Given the prevalence of grave hate in the meta, I don’t think leaning into this plan too heavily is very good, but a small subtheme should be fine right? Even as just a 25th land I think traverse is ok, though finding a basic is not so desireable.
A couple questions emerge though:
*-What mix of spellbombs and baubles should I play?*
I feel like playing more than 1 spellbomb maindeck is overestimating how much time you get in modern hence the 1-1 split, but idk.
*-Should I play a 3rd artifact?*
I feel like the answer is yes, but space is tight. If yes, I think that third artifact should be bauble for reasons above maybe?
*-Should I play a 4th LotV or 2nd brutality to fill my grave faster?*
This is an interesting thought and I’m legitimately not sure. I feel like 3 LotV is about right given the current meta, but maybe 4 is ok if she synergizes so well. Unfortunately I think vraska becomes the cut, but that card overperforms so much. Maybe swap places between Last Hope in the board with vraska?
Sorry for the wall of text, any advice is appreciated.
Yeah, I think just objectively Rock is at a higher power level than jund right now because of the manabase + field of ruin, but I agree that jund is a lot of fun. I think jund is still competitive though, if it’s not quite tier 1. And sometimes tier 1 doesn’t mean anything if you can’t play the deck as well as you can a tier 1.5 or 2 deck.
I think aside from tireless tracker I’ve reached a good balance of the other staple creatures. The 4th bob is a consideration, but I dunno man. Bobs in multiples are just so icky.
To be honest, tracker hasn’t made me too happy lately either (my creature base is nearly identical, -1 kalitas). I feel like the 3rd tracker might belong in the board, but the only problem is then I don’t know what other card to play in its place. My list right now for reference:
A few things concern me about going -1 tracker though. For one, I’ve had similar issues with drawing too few lands sometimes, whereas drawing too many doesn’t seem to be a problem when those lands are composed of field of ruin + manlands, and perhaps more relevant, when I have 3 tireless trackers and a vraska to wade through any flood. edit: To be clearer here, I think if I go -1 tracker I’m inclined to cut land #25, and that makes a tad uncomfortable.
I also worry about replacing tracker with a non-creature spell (probably what I’d play instead) and then ending up with not enough threats. Have any ideas?
I don’t think lili’s triumph is gonna be all that great tbh. Many, many decks in modern go wide rather than tall and edicts just aren’t effective against that style. As is most BGx decks play 4, or sometimes fewer, LotV. Adding diabolical edict is largely unneeded redundancy.
I think the card is very playable, but people seem to be overreacting big time. I don’t see this card making it out of the sideboard, and even then it’s probably only to be included when you’re fearing specifically bogles.
Sounds like stony silence is your primary motivator then?
The card is obviously a great sideboard card, no denying that. Is it really that great against whir prison though? As far as I know, most of their artifact prison pieces don’t have activated abilities, so I’m not sure it really does anything, and I’m pretty sure improvise doesn’t count either. It also notably shuts down tracker clues, though perhaps that doesn’t matter too much in the matchups where silence is relevant.
If affinity is really popular in Europe then I understand why you’re tempted to splash. Otherwise I think there are enough tools in GB to get by.
I asked myself this same question a day or two ago, and I guess I just didn’t see that many cards I really wanted in white. I feel like you lose quite a bit in terms of manabase; you have to play fewer copies of treetop and field of ruin to have a functioning manabase for one, and that manabase becomes substantially more painful because you’ll be forced to shock yourself more.
And when I looked at the spells I was trading for, it just wasn’t that impressive. Souls isn’t great in this meta, so it was hard for me to justify more than 2 maindeck. The real meat for me is path to exile, but even then push is probably all around a bit stronger so I only put 2 in the maindeck.
As for the sideboard, Rest In Peace is actually pretty slow for grave hate I think, and stony silence isn’t as strong as it has been in times past (the best matchups, hardened scales and regular affinity, are pretty rare nowadays). So I guess I just determined that FoR, Treetop, and mana consistency is better than the handful of cards I want in white.
I understand. I just mean to say that the reason why you aren’t playing 4 LotV already is a better determinant to this question. Are you not playing her because 4 is too many? Or because you don’t have space?
If LotV is like the 61st card to you, then I wouldn’t play vraska before 4th LotV. If, however, you’re certain that 3 LotV is precisely where you want to be, then obviously adding a 4th one over vraska doesn’t make sense.
And I definitely agree regrading Tracker, but they get clunky in multiples. 3 trackers is just a mess, and even 2 is often too many clues to be worthwhile. 1 tracker and 1 vraska however is amazing synergy, and 2 trackers + vraska is also quite potent.
LotV is definitely much more powerful than Vraska on a raw power level, but that doesn’t really tell the full story. The two cards do different things, and it feels like when both players are topdecking and mana efficiency becomes negligible, Vraska>LotV.
I feel you, but I promise it looks worse than it is.
A, by no means non-exhaustive, list of where I think she can shine:
-Any matchup where abrupt decay is highly desirable, obviously. In these matchups, she can totally shut the door on a relatively even game.
-Grindy matchups, or more accurately matchups where the games regularly stretch over 6+ turns. Converting your lands into more spells means you pretty much always win a topdeck war.
-Burn. Any maindeck life gain is obviously useful here.
Where I don’t think she’s good:
-Dredge, since almost literally nothing matters here except turning off their grave and killing them. If your meta is particularly infested with dredge specifically, just stick to 2 kalitas maindeck.
-Tron, since once again nothing matters except killing their lands and killing 5+ cmc threats.
-Titan? Haven’t had the chance to test this one so I don’t actually know. On the surface she doesn’t seem great, but these matchups sometimes go long which is where her +2 shines.
3 blackcleave cliffs
2 blooming marsh
4 verdant catacombs
3 bloodstained mire
1 wooded foothills
2 overgrown tomb
1 stomping ground
1 blood crypt
2 swamp
1 Forest
1 mountain
3 raging ravine
3 dark confidant
3 scavenging ooze
4 tarmogoyf
4 BBE
Planeswalkers (5)
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Spells (16)
4 inquisition of kozilek
1 thoughtseize
3 fatal push
3 lightning bolt
4 assassin’s trophy
1 kolaghan’s command
1 Nihil Spellbomb
**+1 spellbomb, -1 thoughtseize to sideboard**
I feel like I sideboard thoughtseizes out of my deck a looot, and spellbomb is a relatively low cost inclusion to hedge against the multitude of grave decks. How often do you all sideboard out thoughtseize? Like 2/3 of matches like I do nowadays?
**4 trophy, 0 pulse, 0 decay**
I wanted to hedge a bit against tron since moving from Rock means losing FoR. It may be in vain, and if so maybe I want 3 trophy-1 decay, but I feel pretty strongly that pulse is too slow in modern nowadays for a removal spell. It’s almost always tempo negative which can leave you very behind on board. Any thoughts?
**1 LtLH, 1 kcommand vs 2kcommabd**
I went with the first LtLH over a second kcommand simply because I feel like BBE into a Liliana planeswalker is such a powerful play, even more powerful than BBE->kcommand. Also without pulse, I’m kind of weak to tokens. The drawback of course is that I’m down a burn spell that can help close out a game. How do you all feel about maindeck LtLH vs kcommand at the 3cmc slot?
That’s probably accurate, and I think that may have been true for a long time honestly. But it seems like shadow decks fit into what I’d call ‘fair’ relative to the rest of modern, and they’re doing relatively ok in the current meta. That kinda leads me to wonder what the difference is between their deck and ours on a very fundamental level, and whether we can benefit from said knowledge to make Rock more competitive.
The most obvious answers to me seem to be that they can turn the corner very quickly and that their decks are hyper mana-efficient. Clock speed may not be replicable without playing shadow, but I feel like lowering our cmc is certainly a possibility.
Either way, it’s only a rule in testing so far. If it’s a really bad rule change for fair modern decks, they probably won’t implement it (tho I hope it passes the test, cause anything to minimize the impact of mulliganing sounds great to me).
Blast zone does seem strong, and maybe I should give it serious thought since I’m playing traverse the ulvenwald.
@whocansay
You’re not wrong, but I feel like almost everything in BG meets the criteria of immediately impacting the game state in a meaningful way, no?
One problem I think I can identify (and maybe this is also what you’re alluding to) is over-paying for effects. To quote Gerry Thompson from some tournament commentary, ‘the number of spells you cast in a match of modern is highly correlated with winrate’.
Considering how many powerful cheap cards are in modern now, it seems like it should be possible to build a strong midrange deck with a very low curve (like basically topping at 3-4 mana and even then only for cards that can end games). If I may identify some spells that I think are especially clunky in BG nowadays: maelstrom pulse, 2nd kalitas, Nissa vital force, vraska sad as I am to admit it, 4th LotV, 3rd tracker, and EE given how much less flexibility it has in a two color deck. BG feels very powerful when you draw a bunch of cheap interaction or a mix of cheap interaction with top end, but feels rancid when your opener is all cmc 3+.
https://mtgmeta.io/tournaments/230
46% winrate is pretty sad, and we’re second to last in the pecking order of decks with significant meta %. The sad thing is that other metagame anaylsis I’ve seen recently corroborates these numbers which says to me that BG midrange (and jund) are just not great decks in modern. Maybe there’s a problem with the way we approach deck building (I wish it were that easy) or perhaps more likely, playing midrange in modern is a losing battle.
4 blooming marsh
4 verdant catacombs
3 overgrown tomb
4 swamp
1 Forest
3 treetop village
1 hissing quagmire
3 field of ruin
1 marsh flats
Creatures (13)
3 dark confidant
4 tarmogoyf
3 scavenging ooze
2 tireless tracker
1 kalitas, traitor of ghet
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the last hope
Spells (16)
4 fatal push
4 inquisition of kozilek
2 thoughtseize
1 collective brutality
3 assassin’s trophy
1 maelstrom pulse
1 traverse the ulvenwald
Artifacts (3)
1 nihil spellbomb
2 mishra’s bauble
3 fulminator mage
1 vraska, golgari queen
1 kalitas, traitor of ghet
3 nihil spellbomb
1 grafdigger’s cage
1 collective brutality
1 damnation
1 creeping corrosion
1 cast down
1 abrupt decay
1 engineered explosives
Edit:
Played the above list at modern night today, went 2-1-1 though I think I was about to pull away from Martyr-Emeria in game 3 except for the clock. I’m counting that as a 3-1
Traverse was excellent every time I drew it. I don’t think more than 1 is good though; delirium isn’t a given and more traverse means more graveyard reliance. The baubles were just fine, maybe even good.
The sideboard is basically the same as it was before I made these maindeck changes, so it’s probably suboptimal right now. I’ll spoiler out the superfluous thoughts from the original post when I
I really like this configuration in theory, but I’m not sure how good it is in practice.
If I can reliably enable delirium, I think this deck has enough tools in the form of creatures and lands that traverse becomes quite insane. Tracker, goyf, kalitas, scooze, and FoR all strike me as very powerful tutor targets that could be key in locking up a game (Bob too, though I don’t imagine traversing until turn 4 or 5 at which point Bob is a lot less good). Given the prevalence of grave hate in the meta, I don’t think leaning into this plan too heavily is very good, but a small subtheme should be fine right? Even as just a 25th land I think traverse is ok, though finding a basic is not so desireable.
A couple questions emerge though:
*-What mix of spellbombs and baubles should I play?*
I feel like playing more than 1 spellbomb maindeck is overestimating how much time you get in modern hence the 1-1 split, but idk.
*-Should I play a 3rd artifact?*
I feel like the answer is yes, but space is tight. If yes, I think that third artifact should be bauble for reasons above maybe?
*-Should I play a 4th LotV or 2nd brutality to fill my grave faster?*
This is an interesting thought and I’m legitimately not sure. I feel like 3 LotV is about right given the current meta, but maybe 4 is ok if she synergizes so well. Unfortunately I think vraska becomes the cut, but that card overperforms so much. Maybe swap places between Last Hope in the board with vraska?
Sorry for the wall of text, any advice is appreciated.
I think aside from tireless tracker I’ve reached a good balance of the other staple creatures. The 4th bob is a consideration, but I dunno man. Bobs in multiples are just so icky.
4 blooming marsh
4 verdant catacombs
3 overgrown tomb
4 swamp
1 Forest
3 treetop village
2 hissing quagmire
4 field of ruin
3 dark confidant
4 tarmogoyf
3 scooze
3 tracker
1 kalitas
Planeswalkers (4)
3 Liliana of the Veil
1 Vraska, golgari queen
4 fatal push
4 inquisition of kozilek
2 thoughtseize
1 collective brutality
1 abrupt decay
4 assassin’s trophy
1 maelstrom pulse
A few things concern me about going -1 tracker though. For one, I’ve had similar issues with drawing too few lands sometimes, whereas drawing too many doesn’t seem to be a problem when those lands are composed of field of ruin + manlands, and perhaps more relevant, when I have 3 tireless trackers and a vraska to wade through any flood. edit: To be clearer here, I think if I go -1 tracker I’m inclined to cut land #25, and that makes a tad uncomfortable.
I also worry about replacing tracker with a non-creature spell (probably what I’d play instead) and then ending up with not enough threats. Have any ideas?
I think the card is very playable, but people seem to be overreacting big time. I don’t see this card making it out of the sideboard, and even then it’s probably only to be included when you’re fearing specifically bogles.
The card is obviously a great sideboard card, no denying that. Is it really that great against whir prison though? As far as I know, most of their artifact prison pieces don’t have activated abilities, so I’m not sure it really does anything, and I’m pretty sure improvise doesn’t count either. It also notably shuts down tracker clues, though perhaps that doesn’t matter too much in the matchups where silence is relevant.
If affinity is really popular in Europe then I understand why you’re tempted to splash. Otherwise I think there are enough tools in GB to get by.
And when I looked at the spells I was trading for, it just wasn’t that impressive. Souls isn’t great in this meta, so it was hard for me to justify more than 2 maindeck. The real meat for me is path to exile, but even then push is probably all around a bit stronger so I only put 2 in the maindeck.
As for the sideboard, Rest In Peace is actually pretty slow for grave hate I think, and stony silence isn’t as strong as it has been in times past (the best matchups, hardened scales and regular affinity, are pretty rare nowadays). So I guess I just determined that FoR, Treetop, and mana consistency is better than the handful of cards I want in white.
What are your thoughts?
If LotV is like the 61st card to you, then I wouldn’t play vraska before 4th LotV. If, however, you’re certain that 3 LotV is precisely where you want to be, then obviously adding a 4th one over vraska doesn’t make sense.
And I definitely agree regrading Tracker, but they get clunky in multiples. 3 trackers is just a mess, and even 2 is often too many clues to be worthwhile. 1 tracker and 1 vraska however is amazing synergy, and 2 trackers + vraska is also quite potent.
A, by no means non-exhaustive, list of where I think she can shine:
-Any matchup where abrupt decay is highly desirable, obviously. In these matchups, she can totally shut the door on a relatively even game.
-Grindy matchups, or more accurately matchups where the games regularly stretch over 6+ turns. Converting your lands into more spells means you pretty much always win a topdeck war.
-Burn. Any maindeck life gain is obviously useful here.
Where I don’t think she’s good:
-Dredge, since almost literally nothing matters here except turning off their grave and killing them. If your meta is particularly infested with dredge specifically, just stick to 2 kalitas maindeck.
-Tron, since once again nothing matters except killing their lands and killing 5+ cmc threats.
-Titan? Haven’t had the chance to test this one so I don’t actually know. On the surface she doesn’t seem great, but these matchups sometimes go long which is where her +2 shines.
That’s all I can think of right now.