Well, modern metagame online is like 45% eldrazi decks. Well done WOTC, with the twin ban the meta is more diverse than ever.
In GP Oklahoma last year, the top8 was merfolk, affinity, burn, scapeshift, lantern control, elves, amulet bloom and twin. 8 different decks... And wotc ban one (two) of them for the sake of diversity? Hypocrisy at its best.
Now waiting until April bans to see how the meta will change (if it'll change)... Until then, HS is the correct way
That deck seems a bit like the all-twin version of the deck, but without twin And there was a good reason that all-twin wasn't played anymore lol
Of course it's ok to try to keep alive a deck we love so much and/or try to get something out of this mess WOTC did, but in my opinion the deck can't be played seriously without twin. I accept that twin, as a deck, have died. Just like Pod died until they printed collected company and a new similar deck arise, we should just give time to get something cool printed. Maybe now they'll print something modern-playable for blue...
For those who have the deck, probably blue moon is the deck that have the most common cards with twin deck, so may be an option... Ofc the power level is not the same, and don't expect the same results, but it's a possibility.
Well I have decided what to do with my twin cards. I will add them into R/U blue moon, but shave off a snappy and fetch into Grxis Delver.
I am pretty sure that there will be a tiny drop off in certain staples like snappy, but nothing drastic. Kiki will go up,not down, for those wishing to continue or play chord-kiki. R/U-x control and aggro shells will work forever, so no need to dump those Snappies.
I think the reason Twin got banned was the fact that most of Modern lacks cheap maindeckable cards to deal with Exarch, blue naturally can get perfect information, and R/U had reasonable methods for filtering meaning that few Twin players ended up punished for playing the combo, unlike most combo decks. Plan B was as good as plan A. If there was a card that if resolved ruined the whole red/blue shell the deck may not have hit the 10%-15% levels to get Wizard's ban-fingers itchy. Other top tier decks like Tron can be hurt a bit by their natural inconsistency and by the fact that you can maindeck Ghost Quarters in most decks. They also have some predator decks- hatebear matchups are not that nice for example. Affinity is still a game one deck- Stony Silence, Shatterstorm, Kataki etc. all exist to hurt it. No equivalent existed for Twin. I would have rather they print a 3 cc uncounterable boil than they banned the deck, but their instance on designing for a weak Standard means we get left with what we have in Modern. Nobody preyed on twin, and they were not going to print uncounterables or 1cc cards to hurt it, leaving us with discard, Skite, Abrupt Decay, Slaughter Pact and Rending Volley, plus some other board cards like Purge. I always thought Volley was a signal they were worried.
Since when is Tron inconsistent? It's probably the most consistent deck, and with the best topdeck in the format. They can search lands to assemble tron, they can search for their threats with eye or stirrings and they draw a lot. By no means Tron is inconsistent lol
Regarding Twin ban, i guess it was a forced rotation in modern, and for me an huge error from wizards. I started playing modern because i could play with my deck for a long long time. What this ban showed us is, no matter if your deck fulfills all of the format requirements (turn 4 rule, etc), it can still be banned, just because they want to sell the new stuff. In this case, they ban the natural predator of eldrazi decks. There isn't a good reason to ban twin (the deck wasn't OP, the shell was the same since the beginning of modern, and the results were good, but not oppressive) but to force players to buy new stuff to get eldrazi decks.
The worst thing is, since innistrad, they don't give any good blue cards (they gave sphinx's revelation but it's not "completely blue", and DTT, that got banned after 3 months). So right now, Modern don't have a blue deck (the normal blue control decks, with counterspells, not talking about the aggro merfolks), nor the cards to create a good one. So, this is it for me, i'll play HS for a while, until they print something useful for a blue deck to arise. Until then, i won't spend any money in magic, i'm tired of this stupid decisions.
Usually the standard UR Twin list uses at least 1 Jace. If you don't have a 2nd Clique, Jace may be a good option (and a much cheaper one) - their purpose is different, but Jace also helps against some of our bad matchups.
Has anybody EVER tested Reality Shift instead of Roast? I'm getting more and more frustrated about Roast, both because of it being sorcery speed which is very annoying and also because of its inhability to get rid of some creatures.
I haven't tested yet, but i don't dislike the idea. In some matchups it would be much better than Roast (removing a wurmcoil, primeval titan or 5/6 goyf), but in others it's not great (elves, affinity, merfolks) because there is a high chance that we are simply replacing one creature for another, due to the amount of creatures those decks have. Maybe 1 in sideboard replacing the 2nd Roast for testing purposes.
In that case, if you want the mana denial plan, why Molten Rain?
Spreading Seas is easier to cast (it's cheaper and it's blue - you don't need RR) and it draws you a card (very important). It will do almost the same against BGx than Molten Rain.
Guys, merfolk is not our worst enemy... It's a bad matchup (or even?), but we can defeat it anyway. Instead of crying for the bad matchup it is, give suggestions of how to make it a good matchup. EE and Anger are 2 powerful weapons we have against it, grim lavamancer and/or vedalken shackles (remember it? we removed because of Kommand...) can help dealing with Kira. So, if someone plays in some meta with a prevalence of merfolk, making some good sideboard choices (anger instead of pyroclasm for instance, etc..) it helps dealing with it. We just need to adapt a bit.
So, being more helpful, how should we sideboard against it?
Remove the 4 remands? between Cavern and Vial we probably won't be needing it. Remove 2 Electrolyze? at best it deals with a creature and draws a card, at worst gets countered or loses its target due to vapor snag. What else do we have that is useless or subpar against Merfolk? I guess we should stick with plan A, keeping the combo to steal the win, having 3 dispels in G2 and G3 (between vapor snag and spell pierce, we have some important targets). Does it make sense to bring any of the Ancient Grudge to deal with Vial?
Merfolk is one of the reasons why i play Anger instead of pyroclasm. It deals with 2 lords in the board.
Also i disagree that Twin is poorly positioned right now. We adapted to a midrange like meta, if the meta is changing for a more aggressive meta, we can adapt again. Twin continues to be one of the strongest decks in modern.
Don't panic just because the share is not 30% twin, if it were, the meta wouldn't be healthy.
RG Tron is very hard in G2 and G3. G1 should be ours - some Tron decks use Spellskite mb that could buy enough time to drop Karn, Wurmcoil, Ugin or even Emrakul - but if we don't win G1, we'll probably loose the match. Overall, I would say that Tron is favourite because of G2 and G3. From my experience, our plan B sucks against them - one swing of Wurmcoil is usually enough to stop it - so until now i always sticked with combo plan in G2 and G3. The problem is that the standard Tron deck has an average of 10-12 twin hate cards in the sideboard (between Spellskite, Nature's Claim, Rending Volley, Torpor Orb, Boil, Sundering Titan, Slaughter Games...).
Regarding our sideboard, I bring 2 Ancient Grudge, 2 Blood Moon, 1 Roast (to kill spellskite) and 2 Negate. Out 4 Bolts, 1 Lavamancer, 2 Electrolyze.
They don't always have Tron turn 3, but usually by turn 4 they would have accomplished that, so we need to win ASAP... I feel that sometimes mulligan an usually good hand (remand, snapcaster, visions, lands, others...) without any combo piece or moon is a smart move...
EDIT : im having more trouble against affinity than I feel I should.
how do you guys sideboard for them?
Hi,
Usually against affinity i bring all my removal and things that can help us race (by making them slow - jace and spellskite):
In: 2 ancient grudge, 2 anger of the gods, 1 Roast, 1 Jace (on the play only), 1 Spellskite
Out: 4 Remand, 2 dispel, 1 cryptic command
If you have EE, bring them as well. Try to keep their side of the board empty
Lol you said that like if Roast is the prime removal of modern it's a bad removal, unfortunately it's the best we have in UR for the current meta...
Vapor Snag is awesome if you have a good clock. That means, I think it would replace Roast in Tarmo Twin for instance, a more tempo oriented deck with Tarmogoyf as a clock. Without access to black, maybe you don't care in removing large creatures, instead keeping them out of the board so you could attack. And returning Tasigur/Gurmag sometimes is almost the same as removing them, because they have to fill their GY again, and it could take a while - maybe enough for us to win...
Against merfolk I simply hate Vapor Snag, it protects their creatures, while disrupting our combo and sometimes making us to loose a lot of tempo - I was testing Thundermaw Hellkite, for instace... Playing a 5 mana creature just to see it returned to my hand with only 1 mana is an awful feeling
Why is thundermaw only good for sideboard? Sure, there are matches where he's too slow, but there are matches where clique is awful, having a 2nd is even worse. I tested Thunderbreak Regent, if it had haste it would be great lol
This thread is about UR Twin, not UR Twin vs Grixis Twin. Can we focus on "how can we make UR Twin better?" discussion?
What do you think if we go bigger, with dragons (Thunderbreak Regent, Thundermaw Hellkite) or Wurmcoil Engine for instance? Could this be the right path to UR Twin? I've been testing Regent, because it's a 4-mana threat. I had 2 mainboard, it worked ok, unfortunately i can't always choose which decks i play against, so i can't really make good conclusions if it would help or not against our worst matchups. I've started to test another version, with a Thundermaw mainboard, instead of lavamancer. I'll see if i get some good results
I agree with you, without going for mana denial with or without blood moon, there is no point in staying only in UR.
I've been testing Thunderbreak Regent, with the purpose of racing Tasigur or Gurmag. Until now it has been ok, not great, because Tasigur/Gurmag can enter on turn 2 or 3, while the Dragon enters on turn 4 without protection... Sometimes is just, play Dragon, removal, does 3 damage. But against Twin it's really good if it enters lol
But I'ld still prefer tasigur... I'm testing a bit more, but if the results aren't positive, maybe a change to grixis will happen soon.
In GP Oklahoma last year, the top8 was merfolk, affinity, burn, scapeshift, lantern control, elves, amulet bloom and twin. 8 different decks... And wotc ban one (two) of them for the sake of diversity? Hypocrisy at its best.
Now waiting until April bans to see how the meta will change (if it'll change)... Until then, HS is the correct way
Of course it's ok to try to keep alive a deck we love so much and/or try to get something out of this mess WOTC did, but in my opinion the deck can't be played seriously without twin. I accept that twin, as a deck, have died. Just like Pod died until they printed collected company and a new similar deck arise, we should just give time to get something cool printed. Maybe now they'll print something modern-playable for blue...
For those who have the deck, probably blue moon is the deck that have the most common cards with twin deck, so may be an option... Ofc the power level is not the same, and don't expect the same results, but it's a possibility.
Since when is Tron inconsistent? It's probably the most consistent deck, and with the best topdeck in the format. They can search lands to assemble tron, they can search for their threats with eye or stirrings and they draw a lot. By no means Tron is inconsistent lol
Regarding Twin ban, i guess it was a forced rotation in modern, and for me an huge error from wizards. I started playing modern because i could play with my deck for a long long time. What this ban showed us is, no matter if your deck fulfills all of the format requirements (turn 4 rule, etc), it can still be banned, just because they want to sell the new stuff. In this case, they ban the natural predator of eldrazi decks. There isn't a good reason to ban twin (the deck wasn't OP, the shell was the same since the beginning of modern, and the results were good, but not oppressive) but to force players to buy new stuff to get eldrazi decks.
The worst thing is, since innistrad, they don't give any good blue cards (they gave sphinx's revelation but it's not "completely blue", and DTT, that got banned after 3 months). So right now, Modern don't have a blue deck (the normal blue control decks, with counterspells, not talking about the aggro merfolks), nor the cards to create a good one. So, this is it for me, i'll play HS for a while, until they print something useful for a blue deck to arise. Until then, i won't spend any money in magic, i'm tired of this stupid decisions.
I haven't tested yet, but i don't dislike the idea. In some matchups it would be much better than Roast (removing a wurmcoil, primeval titan or 5/6 goyf), but in others it's not great (elves, affinity, merfolks) because there is a high chance that we are simply replacing one creature for another, due to the amount of creatures those decks have. Maybe 1 in sideboard replacing the 2nd Roast for testing purposes.
Spreading Seas is easier to cast (it's cheaper and it's blue - you don't need RR) and it draws you a card (very important). It will do almost the same against BGx than Molten Rain.
So, being more helpful, how should we sideboard against it?
Remove the 4 remands? between Cavern and Vial we probably won't be needing it. Remove 2 Electrolyze? at best it deals with a creature and draws a card, at worst gets countered or loses its target due to vapor snag. What else do we have that is useless or subpar against Merfolk? I guess we should stick with plan A, keeping the combo to steal the win, having 3 dispels in G2 and G3 (between vapor snag and spell pierce, we have some important targets). Does it make sense to bring any of the Ancient Grudge to deal with Vial?
Best regards
Also i disagree that Twin is poorly positioned right now. We adapted to a midrange like meta, if the meta is changing for a more aggressive meta, we can adapt again. Twin continues to be one of the strongest decks in modern.
Don't panic just because the share is not 30% twin, if it were, the meta wouldn't be healthy.
Regarding our sideboard, I bring 2 Ancient Grudge, 2 Blood Moon, 1 Roast (to kill spellskite) and 2 Negate. Out 4 Bolts, 1 Lavamancer, 2 Electrolyze.
They don't always have Tron turn 3, but usually by turn 4 they would have accomplished that, so we need to win ASAP... I feel that sometimes mulligan an usually good hand (remand, snapcaster, visions, lands, others...) without any combo piece or moon is a smart move...
Hope it helps
Hi,
Usually against affinity i bring all my removal and things that can help us race (by making them slow - jace and spellskite):
In: 2 ancient grudge, 2 anger of the gods, 1 Roast, 1 Jace (on the play only), 1 Spellskite
Out: 4 Remand, 2 dispel, 1 cryptic command
If you have EE, bring them as well. Try to keep their side of the board empty
Lol you said that like if Roast is the prime removal of modern
Vapor Snag is awesome if you have a good clock. That means, I think it would replace Roast in Tarmo Twin for instance, a more tempo oriented deck with Tarmogoyf as a clock. Without access to black, maybe you don't care in removing large creatures, instead keeping them out of the board so you could attack. And returning Tasigur/Gurmag sometimes is almost the same as removing them, because they have to fill their GY again, and it could take a while - maybe enough for us to win...
Against merfolk I simply hate Vapor Snag, it protects their creatures, while disrupting our combo and sometimes making us to loose a lot of tempo - I was testing Thundermaw Hellkite, for instace... Playing a 5 mana creature just to see it returned to my hand with only 1 mana is an awful feeling
What do you think if we go bigger, with dragons (Thunderbreak Regent, Thundermaw Hellkite) or Wurmcoil Engine for instance? Could this be the right path to UR Twin? I've been testing Regent, because it's a 4-mana threat. I had 2 mainboard, it worked ok, unfortunately i can't always choose which decks i play against, so i can't really make good conclusions if it would help or not against our worst matchups. I've started to test another version, with a Thundermaw mainboard, instead of lavamancer. I'll see if i get some good results
I've been testing Thunderbreak Regent, with the purpose of racing Tasigur or Gurmag. Until now it has been ok, not great, because Tasigur/Gurmag can enter on turn 2 or 3, while the Dragon enters on turn 4 without protection... Sometimes is just, play Dragon, removal, does 3 damage. But against Twin it's really good if it enters lol
But I'ld still prefer tasigur... I'm testing a bit more, but if the results aren't positive, maybe a change to grixis will happen soon.