I very much believe we are moving towards miracles, in that we are becoming a prison deck with the flexibility to operate with countermagic and at instant speed if required.
The purpose of think twice was to power x spells and maximize ability to win with colonnade. At a certain point, that gameplan becomes a vicious feedback cycle where if you miss land drops, your rev won't be big enough to guarantee finding enough action mixed in with lands and the spells that exist to help you draw enough lands early.
Since oath of the gatewatch, the utility of the colonnade endgame has pretty much gone away. Between push, field of ruin, and smasher/tks, there just aren't any matchups where that endgame plan is reliably enough on its own.
If we're no longer trying to feed that machine, we can just play a couple creature lands because they're freebies and fill those land slots and card draw slots with mana efficient dig and better lategame. Think twice was usually digging for lands early. An early SFA digs three or four cards before flipping into the game ending card advantage and selection tool we always wanted.
A note on sideboarding: if you play WSZ, basically don't cut it ever unless you're up a game and the clock-out 1-0-1 is a consideration. Definitely don't cut it against fair creature decks, it shines the most there.
I've certainly considered going back up to 2 snares. But idk what I would cut--timely reinforcements has been great mainboard just about every time I've drawn it. It stabilizes in a way that a small secure or a lingering souls can't match.
I beat an esper spirits player tonight who 9-0'd a 1k in the area recently. Didn't play an event, just the one match for fun.
If my lists aren't enough... I'm in discussions with Jim Davis right now to schedule a day for THREE competitive leagues with my list to tune the last couple slots; tentative date is April 21 for what will be a VERY long stream; last time I paid him to run a league with a draw go list it took just shy of five hours to play one competitive league of 15 total games, so I expect a three-league stream to take at least 10-12 hours.
I agree with those rankings but would insert open day 2's at 4.5.
Most of shaheens modern play is modo or opens--he only has five modern GP's, with one 11-4, one mediocre day 2 (+1 win over losses) and three failures to day 2. (Data from mtg elo project)
Shaheen is not a strong modern player. He's much much stronger as a standard/legacy player.
I look at shaheens list in every format to figure out what the biggest possible impact sideboard cards are for every match, because that's how he builds his decks--piles of the biggest impact cards. With little or no regard for having a cohesive deck or gameplan in a matchup he doesn't pre-plan bombs for.
If you look at his mtgo results, he's pretty consistently worse than most of the dedicated modern control streamers. Donny is probably a 60% winrate in competitive leagues if he puts in the reps on Esper. That's as good as shaheen's usual win rate in paper events, which have a softer field and a wider variety of decks.
Played a 3-rounder tonight with the same 75 (swapped the wrath to a verdict). Went 3-0, 6-0 in games, beat bloodbraid jund, scapeshift, and burn. Lost all three die rolls. I think I'm pretty close to settled on this list--probably going to keep messing with the timely reinforcements slot, the sideboard, and the dimir charm/3rd knot slots. So far dimir charm has been straight gas, either counterspell or ultimate price basically every time. I used it once with a jace on board + a snapcaster shown from hand to draw a concession.
I wouldn't mainboard halo, and the fact that it doesn't protect JTMS isn't even part of that consideration. Runed halo is just too narrow. Yeah, it's great when it's great, but it's not "good enough enough of the time". There are just better cmc2 removal spells.
I contrast this to leyline, which has about as many decks where it's really great, but in matchups where it isn't it still stops a wider array of threats/problems than halo can.
The other comment I have on your list is that you're very soft in the wincons department. Creaturelands really aren't reliable win conditions any longer, Snapcaster obviously also dies to everything. That leaves you in the position of 2 jace and a secure the wastes. I think you might find over time that this is actually few enough that opponents will reliably beat you just by answering all of your threats, in any game where for whatever reason your secure the wastes has to get burned early or is answered. Not a huge gripe, but I think that was a big part of the reason why Secure builds played two copies.
I'm on no cantrips and have been on no cantrips for a long time (jamming a midrange deck for a few weeks doesn't count--I was on zero counterspells in the 75).
Prior to the unbanning, I was on 2 search for azcanta 25 land 3 think twice.
At this point, I've cut the think twice entirely alongside most of the colonnades and one of the sphinx's revs.
Most of the reason we played all the raw card draw was to fuel land drops so we could get into the colonnade + interaction level of land drops.
With search for azcanta providing early filtering, late game card advantage, and a land based way to "apply pressure" that doesn't require us to also hold up interaction, we don't need to hit 12 land drops every game anymore. Consequently, I don't want to see my x-spells as frequently. The biggest change I want to make at the moment is to squeeze the fourth cryptic in, followed by testing a copy of supreme will. I think 25 lands is here to stay and I think search for azcanta has for the most part rendered TT obsolete.
There's a very good set of reasons for all of the items you mentioned.
Let me go through the weird stuff one at a time:
2 MB leylines: these have nothing to do with JTMS. Those of you who've been here at all the last couple of years know I play them. It's been a ton of testing, experience, and play with that configuration to get to where I'm at. I attribute my long term win percentage with the deck very heavily to the mainboard esper charms and leylines vs the tech/benefits of most other control builds in modern.
2 thoughtseize: I spent a few weeks on 6 or 7 discard spells in a variety of configurations. I then cut to four, then three, then two. Two is where I decided I wanted to be overall, and it was a choice between collective brutality, thoughtseize, and duress. I eventually determined I wanted thoughtseize to hit cryptic and thought knot seer/tron threats. I started them main because I had good experiences with them + jace bounce against fair decks and I wanted a couple of ways mainboard to get a look at my opponent's hand. They've never been dead; i've not even shuffled them away when I had the option to.
I'm playing a wrath because the MODO account I borrowed only had three verdicts and I wanted to keep it consistent over the last few days. It should be four verdict, we can beat thrun with blessed alliance.
Only two manlands: I won't leave home in UBx in modern without at least one tarpit. It's the jace slayer, and it was pivotal in one match vs UWR. I played the colonnade because the first one is both quite powerful AND a great bait for opposing field of ruin, to maybe leave me with an azcanta for a bit longer against jund. I can't play 7 basics and 3 field of ruin and more creature lands, so I opted to keep the mana disruption and the basics. Having lots of painless lands to fetch is great.
Timely reinforcements mainboard: flex slot plain and simple. I have a lot of revolt zoo and goblins/burn players in my local meta, and it isn't too shabby as a time walk against mardu pyromancer and BR hollow one either.
Zenith: still the best late game win condition. Plain and simple. Everyone is ready for jace and jtms takes a number of turns to put the game out of reach. Wsz is an immediate 6 or 7 for one that nullifies whatever board position your opponent had immediately.
No cantrips/TT: i've been shaving the pure card draw down ever since we got search for azcanta. By packing more actual spells in the deck instead of air, we alleviate the problem of drawing into air a bit AND we reduce our need to hit a million land drops. It plays a lot more like miracles in legacy, where you hit 3 or 4 lands most of the time and kind of stabilize there and only make intermittent land drops for a bit. This hasn't bit me in a control mirror yet, probably because esper has more tools for the control mirror than anyone else to start with.
Dimir charm: is kind of like blessed alliance in that it's modal, castable against everyone (never completely dead) and the portent mode is game over against any nonblue deck with jace out because it virtually guarantees 3-4 turns of a fateseal lock. Instead of being scaleable in power level like alliance, it's just the right cmc to be an early game interactive spell that doesn't fall off lategame.
I'm not a fan of damping sphere. It's not an upgrade on anything we already had, and it doesn't solve our main problem with tron decks unless you cast it on turn two; i'm not interested in having three copies of it, I'd just play negate/remand/logic knot/mana leak to tag turn 3 karn instead. Especially with field of ruin now.
I played a competitive league and went 4-1 with this list, then played it in a paper four rounder this afternoon and went 4-0.
I beat BB Jund, BB jund, affinity, and some UWR pile with jace and spell queller, and lost to ponza in the league on modo.
In the paper event I beat revolt zoo, 4c jeskai ascendancy, mardu pyromancer with blood moons, and dredge.
I'm pretty happy with where the list is right now, but I haven't played against eldrazi tron or Gx tron of any form so I don't know for sure if it feels like a reasonable matchup or not. Jace was very good at keeping the board stabilized once we get a chance to do so--I didn't experience any of the awkward stabilize-->draw lands/bricks-->lose control and die experiences that were so frustrating prior to jace. Sometimes, he was just a 4 mana brainstorm, but other times he was quite strong. I brainstormed for 7 or 8 turns while at 4 life against zoo and it was enough to turn the tide and eventually stabilize.
I've backed out of inquisition. I've played a couple events now on 2 thoughtseize and a collective brutality. The ability to take cryptic or large creatures after bouncing them with Jace has been more relevant than the disruption to early curve from inquisition.
The flexibility of brutality makes me want to try dimir charm again.
Related but separate topic: i graduate from this army school mid-april. At that time, I'm going to look to do a full rewrite of the primer, hopefully condensing a lot of the current primer into a historical section.
I think there's a distinction to be made with a lot of the jace + discard + souls piles (like what I'm playing now!) that a lot of people aren't considering:
Discard + spot removal overload is the tried and true way of getting through the first couple turns of the game cleanly in modern. If you want to maximize the chances of Jace getting on the board and going, this is how you do it. It's not the best jace deck. But it's the best pile for TESTING jace and finding out exactly how strong he is against a given deck.
I expect to eventually end up on a deck with jace and other countermagic, but I expect it will involve slowly transitioning back from current numbers to more reactive spells. Proactive is the new reality with control in modern I think.
To be perfectly clear, I don't intend to be on six discard/no countermagic to really speak of for very long. This is just what I'm jamming while I suss out what impacts jace has on matchups.
I don't think this is a time for theorycrafting (ironic, I know). The format is in a huge state of flux and the vast majority of decks online right now seem very inbred to Jace. Theorycrafting about a mix of removal or combo matchups etc is pointless unless you have a serious tournament on monday, in which case I'd say to jam burn with the spell mastery burn spell as a four of in the board and be done with it.
The reality is, wr know how to beat combo with our colors and we know how to beat most of the linear decks with the colors we have available. We've all invested a lot of time and reps into that. For all of those matchups, just think of jace as a lantern control minigame we get to add to the deck to frustrate our opponents.
The real question is where we shake out in the new order of fair decks. To figure that out, we need grindy reps against those decks, in order to really get a feel for how our tools play against their new builds.
If you want to ensure you get to slam some haymaker spell barrages back and forth with fair decks, you'll see that's what my list does. Lots of discard and removal to ensure I don't fall too far behind on board before I can cast some more impactful spells.
We can tune it back later. For now, I just want to learn how jace matches up in practice against the new reality of our opponents.
The purpose of think twice was to power x spells and maximize ability to win with colonnade. At a certain point, that gameplan becomes a vicious feedback cycle where if you miss land drops, your rev won't be big enough to guarantee finding enough action mixed in with lands and the spells that exist to help you draw enough lands early.
Since oath of the gatewatch, the utility of the colonnade endgame has pretty much gone away. Between push, field of ruin, and smasher/tks, there just aren't any matchups where that endgame plan is reliably enough on its own.
If we're no longer trying to feed that machine, we can just play a couple creature lands because they're freebies and fill those land slots and card draw slots with mana efficient dig and better lategame. Think twice was usually digging for lands early. An early SFA digs three or four cards before flipping into the game ending card advantage and selection tool we always wanted.
A note on sideboarding: if you play WSZ, basically don't cut it ever unless you're up a game and the clock-out 1-0-1 is a consideration. Definitely don't cut it against fair creature decks, it shines the most there.
I beat an esper spirits player tonight who 9-0'd a 1k in the area recently. Didn't play an event, just the one match for fun.
The list I'm on right now:
4 flooded strand
4 polluted delta
2 hallowed fountain
1 godless shrine
1 watery grave
4 island
2 plains
1 swamp
1 celestial colonnade
1 creeping tar pit
3 field of ruin
Spells:
4 path to exile
2 thoughtseize
1 spell snare
3 logic knot
2 blessed alliance
2 snapcaster mage
2 search for azcanta
1 dimir charm
4 esper charm
1 timely reinforcements
2 leyline of sanctity
3 cryptic command
4 supreme verdict
2 jace, the mind sculptor
1 sphinx's revelation
1 white sun's zenith
3 surgical extraction
2 baneslayer angel
2 runed halo
2 celestial purge
1 elspeth, sun's champion
1 dispel
1 negate
1 disenchant
1 timely reinforcements
1 sorcerous spyglass
The slots I'm looking to tune are Island #4, dimir charm, timely in the main, and timely/disenchant/spyglass sideboard.
Most of shaheens modern play is modo or opens--he only has five modern GP's, with one 11-4, one mediocre day 2 (+1 win over losses) and three failures to day 2. (Data from mtg elo project)
Shaheen is not a strong modern player. He's much much stronger as a standard/legacy player.
If you look at his mtgo results, he's pretty consistently worse than most of the dedicated modern control streamers. Donny is probably a 60% winrate in competitive leagues if he puts in the reps on Esper. That's as good as shaheen's usual win rate in paper events, which have a softer field and a wider variety of decks.
I contrast this to leyline, which has about as many decks where it's really great, but in matchups where it isn't it still stops a wider array of threats/problems than halo can.
The other comment I have on your list is that you're very soft in the wincons department. Creaturelands really aren't reliable win conditions any longer, Snapcaster obviously also dies to everything. That leaves you in the position of 2 jace and a secure the wastes. I think you might find over time that this is actually few enough that opponents will reliably beat you just by answering all of your threats, in any game where for whatever reason your secure the wastes has to get burned early or is answered. Not a huge gripe, but I think that was a big part of the reason why Secure builds played two copies.
Prior to the unbanning, I was on 2 search for azcanta 25 land 3 think twice.
At this point, I've cut the think twice entirely alongside most of the colonnades and one of the sphinx's revs.
Most of the reason we played all the raw card draw was to fuel land drops so we could get into the colonnade + interaction level of land drops.
With search for azcanta providing early filtering, late game card advantage, and a land based way to "apply pressure" that doesn't require us to also hold up interaction, we don't need to hit 12 land drops every game anymore. Consequently, I don't want to see my x-spells as frequently. The biggest change I want to make at the moment is to squeeze the fourth cryptic in, followed by testing a copy of supreme will. I think 25 lands is here to stay and I think search for azcanta has for the most part rendered TT obsolete.
Let me go through the weird stuff one at a time:
2 MB leylines: these have nothing to do with JTMS. Those of you who've been here at all the last couple of years know I play them. It's been a ton of testing, experience, and play with that configuration to get to where I'm at. I attribute my long term win percentage with the deck very heavily to the mainboard esper charms and leylines vs the tech/benefits of most other control builds in modern.
2 thoughtseize: I spent a few weeks on 6 or 7 discard spells in a variety of configurations. I then cut to four, then three, then two. Two is where I decided I wanted to be overall, and it was a choice between collective brutality, thoughtseize, and duress. I eventually determined I wanted thoughtseize to hit cryptic and thought knot seer/tron threats. I started them main because I had good experiences with them + jace bounce against fair decks and I wanted a couple of ways mainboard to get a look at my opponent's hand. They've never been dead; i've not even shuffled them away when I had the option to.
I'm playing a wrath because the MODO account I borrowed only had three verdicts and I wanted to keep it consistent over the last few days. It should be four verdict, we can beat thrun with blessed alliance.
Only two manlands: I won't leave home in UBx in modern without at least one tarpit. It's the jace slayer, and it was pivotal in one match vs UWR. I played the colonnade because the first one is both quite powerful AND a great bait for opposing field of ruin, to maybe leave me with an azcanta for a bit longer against jund. I can't play 7 basics and 3 field of ruin and more creature lands, so I opted to keep the mana disruption and the basics. Having lots of painless lands to fetch is great.
Timely reinforcements mainboard: flex slot plain and simple. I have a lot of revolt zoo and goblins/burn players in my local meta, and it isn't too shabby as a time walk against mardu pyromancer and BR hollow one either.
Zenith: still the best late game win condition. Plain and simple. Everyone is ready for jace and jtms takes a number of turns to put the game out of reach. Wsz is an immediate 6 or 7 for one that nullifies whatever board position your opponent had immediately.
No cantrips/TT: i've been shaving the pure card draw down ever since we got search for azcanta. By packing more actual spells in the deck instead of air, we alleviate the problem of drawing into air a bit AND we reduce our need to hit a million land drops. It plays a lot more like miracles in legacy, where you hit 3 or 4 lands most of the time and kind of stabilize there and only make intermittent land drops for a bit. This hasn't bit me in a control mirror yet, probably because esper has more tools for the control mirror than anyone else to start with.
Dimir charm: is kind of like blessed alliance in that it's modal, castable against everyone (never completely dead) and the portent mode is game over against any nonblue deck with jace out because it virtually guarantees 3-4 turns of a fateseal lock. Instead of being scaleable in power level like alliance, it's just the right cmc to be an early game interactive spell that doesn't fall off lategame.
I played a competitive league and went 4-1 with this list, then played it in a paper four rounder this afternoon and went 4-0.
4 polluted delta
2 hallowed fountain
1 irrigated farmland
1 watery grave
1 godless shrine
4 island
2 plains
1 swamp
1 celestial colonnade
1 creeping tar pit
3 field of ruin
4 path to exile
1 spell snare
2 thoughtseize
2 search for azcanta
2 snapcaster mage
2 blessed alliance
3 logic knot
1 dimir charm
4 esper charm
1 timely reinforcements
2 jace, the mind sculptor
2 leyline of sanctity
3 cryptic command
3 supreme verdict
1 wrath of god
1 sphinx's revelation
1 white sun's zenith
2 celestial purge
2 baneslayer angel
2 runed halo
1 elspeth, sun's champion
1 timely reinforcements
3 surgical extraction
1 dispel
1 negate
1 disenchant
1 sorcerous spyglass
I beat BB Jund, BB jund, affinity, and some UWR pile with jace and spell queller, and lost to ponza in the league on modo.
In the paper event I beat revolt zoo, 4c jeskai ascendancy, mardu pyromancer with blood moons, and dredge.
I'm pretty happy with where the list is right now, but I haven't played against eldrazi tron or Gx tron of any form so I don't know for sure if it feels like a reasonable matchup or not. Jace was very good at keeping the board stabilized once we get a chance to do so--I didn't experience any of the awkward stabilize-->draw lands/bricks-->lose control and die experiences that were so frustrating prior to jace. Sometimes, he was just a 4 mana brainstorm, but other times he was quite strong. I brainstormed for 7 or 8 turns while at 4 life against zoo and it was enough to turn the tide and eventually stabilize.
The flexibility of brutality makes me want to try dimir charm again.
Discard + spot removal overload is the tried and true way of getting through the first couple turns of the game cleanly in modern. If you want to maximize the chances of Jace getting on the board and going, this is how you do it. It's not the best jace deck. But it's the best pile for TESTING jace and finding out exactly how strong he is against a given deck.
I expect to eventually end up on a deck with jace and other countermagic, but I expect it will involve slowly transitioning back from current numbers to more reactive spells. Proactive is the new reality with control in modern I think.
I don't think this is a time for theorycrafting (ironic, I know). The format is in a huge state of flux and the vast majority of decks online right now seem very inbred to Jace. Theorycrafting about a mix of removal or combo matchups etc is pointless unless you have a serious tournament on monday, in which case I'd say to jam burn with the spell mastery burn spell as a four of in the board and be done with it.
The reality is, wr know how to beat combo with our colors and we know how to beat most of the linear decks with the colors we have available. We've all invested a lot of time and reps into that. For all of those matchups, just think of jace as a lantern control minigame we get to add to the deck to frustrate our opponents.
The real question is where we shake out in the new order of fair decks. To figure that out, we need grindy reps against those decks, in order to really get a feel for how our tools play against their new builds.
If you want to ensure you get to slam some haymaker spell barrages back and forth with fair decks, you'll see that's what my list does. Lots of discard and removal to ensure I don't fall too far behind on board before I can cast some more impactful spells.
We can tune it back later. For now, I just want to learn how jace matches up in practice against the new reality of our opponents.