it mainly comes down to the rest of the deck
my list has an average curve of 2.6 (assuming i'm casting my commune with lava for 3) and i have 4xRelic + 4xJet to find more lands if im low. so 22 lands is fine for me.
i also don't play any 4 drops that i'd want to rush out (PnK, thunderbreak, etc.) so i have zero use for rocks.
i'd argue they still aren't worth including for just a couple 4 drops, you really need to be playing big red to get real use out of them
as an accelerant their main use is early in the game. so ask yourself if you really want to be skipping your 3-mana play for the sake of making a 4-mana play. this usually means playing a PW like koth or chandra onto a board that probably stands in their favor considering you spent your last turn playing a rock instead of killing their t2 play, and you skipped your 3-mana plays like moon that could lock them off the board, or reckoner that could stand in front of your PW. so if you want rocks to really work you need to play a ton of 4-drops that don't need additional protection. i.e. PnK & thunderbreak. and while those are both fine cards, they're alot less powerful than a koth or a chandra, but now you're running anywhere from 10 to 16 4-drops.
i say, just run reckoners and or eternal scourges instead of rocks, they accomplish the same goal, arent dead weight in the late game, interact more powerfully with the rest of our deck, and i'd argue outperform the 4 drops that you'd be playing in their stead. plus it takes up less overall deckspace.
if your list has an average curve of 2.7, then 23 or 24 lands would be more appropriate depending on how much cycle/filter you run. 2.8 should have 24 lands if not 1 or 2 more. again, depending on whether or not you have rocks/cycle/filter in significant amounts.
ive seen people running rabblemasters in the sideboard to try and race them.
but in all honesty it's one of our worst matchups out there, if it's really common i'd say try out the red/black skred list for its hand disruption.
the number of people complaining that "only BG/x is safe" astounds me.
right, cause tron got banned (eye was incidental and didn't stop it at all), affinity got banned, literally all control decks got a ban, burn got banned, merfolk got banned, etc. /s
there are tons of 'safe' options that are available to you.
i get that WotC is doing a straight garbage job of explaining these bans, but are you honestly going to sit there and say,"man i really just had no idea dredge was on the chopping block".
i called a dredge ban of some kind way back when cathartic reunion got spoiled. but all y'all just bought further into it without considering the possibility the deck would get banned. sorry, but i can't feel sorry for any of ya. especially considering this likely just means a demotion to tier 2.
and I'm not even convinced infect is dead either. the deck remains powerful, if you can read your opponent without needing a peek effect, then it will perform similarly if you simply swap the git-probes for street wraiths. not that street wraiths are the replacement of choice but my point stands.
infect will be far from dead, they got some new toys to help make up for the loss of git-probe. definitely gonna see a drop in play though.
more broadly, no more git-probe means at least a slight inconvenience to the consistency of most combo decks, which is good news considering the average combo deck challenges us more than most.
dredge is definitely gonna be hurting at least a noticeable bit.
i think fatal push is easily the best thing to happen FOR skred in a minuet. a-lot of the more general, but slower, black removal will get fazed out at least to some small extent in favor of fatal push. so fewer dismembers, terminates, slaughter pacts, etc. we're looking at a removal spell that rivals both bolt and path.
this new trinity of high-quality removal spells all share a single commonality, they can't kill stormbreath. this even benefits sarkhan and GDD among others. this is VERY good for us. the % of decks that simply can't answer our late-game threats profitably is guaranteed to increase because of this.
But wait! there's more! an inevitable rise in fatal pushes may just lead to a decrease in low-cmc high-p/t creatures that we can struggle to answer early on. (this may backfire slightly and lead to one or two more angler's than we'd like, but oh well)
there's other potential benefits to come from this too, but personally, even if the list stops here i'm rather pleased.
i think the main thing that could stand to really screw us in all this is if tron, of any variety, picks up steam.
also, @okoSheep, if U-tron is only our 2nd worst MU, what's worse by your estimation? personally i've not found more trouble with any other deck than U-tron.
Also we don't wreck U tron. Maybe a newer player, but not somene that actually knows how to play the deck.
sorry, i phrased it kinda weird. i was saying U-tron is the exception to our across the board good control MU's. i've only ever beaten a good U-Tron player once, and that was with akroma.
Why on earth do we need help vs control?
Ignoring tier 3 stuff you shouldn't bother worrying about like U-Tron, we already annihilate that MU.
Kill their pitiful clocks early, do nothing mid, play around their now-worthless counters late.
Our worst case scenario is an unanswered T2 tasigur or nahiri.
And nahiri hardly counts as a concern, T4 Nahiri, pass -> T4 koth, bash nahiri, pass.
We MB relics to slow their delve and shutdown their snaps/neuter their k-commands.
Blood moon nearly auto-wins when landed.
All our threats are highly relevant vs jeskai, and PWs are amazing vs the rest.
Yeah, I just don't like gearhulk, removal bait with a less consistent browbeat stapled to it. And browbeats no good to start with.
If it's etb were better or it blanked significant removal, then sure. But as is its a no-go.
Im okay with that though considering how bonkers chandra tod is. Outside of machinegunning tokens, there's nothing she cant beat pyromaster at.e
Hopefully we can get 1, maybe even 2, new cards to accompany her that have scry. If there's one thing id kill for, it's more scry.
MATCH 1 vs naya burn, win 2-1
lose game 1 by keeping a slow, but still reasonable, hand.
game 2 i win going T1 > pass, T2 > chalice x=1, T3 moon.
game 3 i win off of 2 dragon's claws, a moon, and a board full of reckoners.
MATCH 2 vs jeskai nahiri, win 2-0
win both games by playing a better control deck =P
but for real
game 1 quickly devolves into draw-go-EoTburn. but he decides to tap-out T6 for a collonade attack. crack-back with a moon and win
game 2 becomes draw-go, with less burn, right out of the gate. he lands an on-curve nahiri and my only answer is a chandra. Okay. spend the next 13 or so turns keeping nahiri honest with chandra, and tossing some incidental damage her way here and there. he tries to keep my chandra from ulting too, but A: he runs less burn, B: he cares less about chandra's ult than i do about nahiri's, & C: i have 2 relics in play to stop snaps. eventually, the turn before his nahiri would ult, i EoT commune for x=4 (leaving up 3 mana for leaks), pop both relics, untap & ult chandra. i blow up his 2 basic islands (moon was in play at this point), kill his geist of saint traft with a fallout, send the 2 damage from fallout and the 6 damage from 3 magma jets at nahiri. scry 2x3 off the jets. and play another relic. the game was mine to lose from there.
MATCH 3 vs infect, win 2-1
game 1 is lost in a similar fashion to G1M1, keep on 'Okayish' hand and hope my opponent isnt playing something terribly aggresive. which is retarded of me concidering i'd seen him earlier tonight playing infect. in the end i only saw 1 removal spell. not that i had too many turns to dig for more.
games 2 & 3 were both cakewalks. game 2's opening hand was 3 removal (1 magma jet), 1 relic, 3 lands. game 3's opening hand (after mulligan) was 3 removal (2 magma jets), 1 relic, 2 lands.
MATCH 4 vs boros burn, win 2-0
he flooded game 1, and i mean flooded. more lands than i saw by 50% at least. AND ofc uses tons of fetches and only ran 17 to begin with.
he starved game 2, though it wasn't nearly as bad... initially. he was stuck on 2, but i molten rained his second land T3.
not much to say here, except for the molten rain, i could've been playing any deck at any skill level and won.
but i've played against this deck a number of times before and feel reasonably confident in my preparedness for it. especially now that so much of my SB is so relevant against them.
i'd love to show back up come Sunday evening with a GP report, but alas, despite it being a 30m drive from me, i can't make it to the GP. riperino~
Koth can close out the game faster than nahiri, if 8 damage + whatever else you're doing is enough to kill.
The majority of games where koth is unanswered, I win before he can ult.
Plus I've survived somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 of the hasty emrakuels that've been thrown at me. Usually from through the breach decks, I just sac my lands, untap my threats and kill them. I had a game with nahiri vs storm breath where I just let nahiri ult, then killed him at 5.
Meanwhile, the only 2 games I've ever lost with koth ult, had come from aggressively terrible misplays on my part.
Koth isn't useless on board when you're behind, so long as they have 3 or less power on board, he's basically "deal 8 damage, fog 2(+) times". So unless you're significantly behind, he's still useful. Very useful infact, won plenty of games by drawing a stormbreath, sarkhan, or those last few burn spells I needed in the midst of that 2 turn fog to close out the game.
That said, I don't like multiples, it can be bursty, which is nice. But it's almost exclusively bursty.
@taheenmage
It's a blackhand trooper from c&c
@okosheep
I know personally, I replaced koth #4 with chandra #2. Considering the rest of my deck makes slight sacrifices in the grind area for better late-game-bursts, it's been nice having one more grind-house card in the list.
I love commune, whenever a game grinds out to a stall with both players relying on topdecks it just wins the game.
That said, getting 2 in hand isn't great, plus its not ideal vs aggro (which is rather common obv). I love the one-of.
Cut a koth just cause legendary clause, was having too many games where I ran into more koths than I needed. 4 is still fine, but I personally prefer 3.
Moon was always a 2-3 MB, rest in the SB card to me.
I recently cut 2 Mountains for 2 more relics MB cause I was seeing just slightly more land than I wanted. I have had 1/20 games (roughly, probably slightly higher) where I have mana issues. So ill probably swap a mouth of ronom for a mountain.
But, I've looooooved mouth of ronom. Uncounterable, colorless removal that freely comes from the mana base. It just costs so little to run. Especially in scourge builds.
I expected to have more issues casting reckoner than I actually have, the few times where I do have an issue, I can find a reasonable alternative play. Or just play moon and fix my mana.
"GDD lacks the explosive potential that our deck loves. it's why i cut PnK, t-break, GDD, b-skull, and more."
>Cutting PnK
>ISHYGDDT
For real though, out of curiosity, what did you replace them with? Could I see a list?
Also, in regards to your analysis of GDD, it seems you're focused on a more aggressive/explosive build of the deck, which is fine, but that's not the version GDD is good for. So I guess our 5-drop of choice comes down to a different strokes thing. I love Stormbreath, but opted to swap to the Dwellers because I prefer grinding out the game through incremental value than exploding into a win out of nowhere. The fact that Skred can go both ways though is great.
I definitely understand what you're saying, and I do agree to some extent.
Like I said, GDD's biggest strength is flashing back value spells. I just don't think we have access to enough of them yet. Not saying we strictly don't, just that its not enough for my tastes personally.
It's not that I value aggression/explosiveness over grinding out value. It's that I want everything to pull at least 2 roles when I'm investing 4+ mana in it.
And generally I like having my threats all overlap on aggression.
The idea isn't to play aggressively, but to be better able to switch gears when appropriate to a better result.
my list has an average curve of 2.6 (assuming i'm casting my commune with lava for 3) and i have 4xRelic + 4xJet to find more lands if im low. so 22 lands is fine for me.
i also don't play any 4 drops that i'd want to rush out (PnK, thunderbreak, etc.) so i have zero use for rocks.
as an accelerant their main use is early in the game. so ask yourself if you really want to be skipping your 3-mana play for the sake of making a 4-mana play. this usually means playing a PW like koth or chandra onto a board that probably stands in their favor considering you spent your last turn playing a rock instead of killing their t2 play, and you skipped your 3-mana plays like moon that could lock them off the board, or reckoner that could stand in front of your PW. so if you want rocks to really work you need to play a ton of 4-drops that don't need additional protection. i.e. PnK & thunderbreak. and while those are both fine cards, they're alot less powerful than a koth or a chandra, but now you're running anywhere from 10 to 16 4-drops.
i say, just run reckoners and or eternal scourges instead of rocks, they accomplish the same goal, arent dead weight in the late game, interact more powerfully with the rest of our deck, and i'd argue outperform the 4 drops that you'd be playing in their stead. plus it takes up less overall deckspace.
if your list has an average curve of 2.7, then 23 or 24 lands would be more appropriate depending on how much cycle/filter you run. 2.8 should have 24 lands if not 1 or 2 more. again, depending on whether or not you have rocks/cycle/filter in significant amounts.
but in all honesty it's one of our worst matchups out there, if it's really common i'd say try out the red/black skred list for its hand disruption.
right, cause tron got banned (eye was incidental and didn't stop it at all), affinity got banned, literally all control decks got a ban, burn got banned, merfolk got banned, etc. /s
there are tons of 'safe' options that are available to you.
i get that WotC is doing a straight garbage job of explaining these bans, but are you honestly going to sit there and say,"man i really just had no idea dredge was on the chopping block".
i called a dredge ban of some kind way back when cathartic reunion got spoiled. but all y'all just bought further into it without considering the possibility the deck would get banned. sorry, but i can't feel sorry for any of ya. especially considering this likely just means a demotion to tier 2.
and I'm not even convinced infect is dead either. the deck remains powerful, if you can read your opponent without needing a peek effect, then it will perform similarly if you simply swap the git-probes for street wraiths. not that street wraiths are the replacement of choice but my point stands.
more broadly, no more git-probe means at least a slight inconvenience to the consistency of most combo decks, which is good news considering the average combo deck challenges us more than most.
dredge is definitely gonna be hurting at least a noticeable bit.
i think fatal push is easily the best thing to happen FOR skred in a minuet. a-lot of the more general, but slower, black removal will get fazed out at least to some small extent in favor of fatal push. so fewer dismembers, terminates, slaughter pacts, etc. we're looking at a removal spell that rivals both bolt and path.
this new trinity of high-quality removal spells all share a single commonality, they can't kill stormbreath. this even benefits sarkhan and GDD among others. this is VERY good for us. the % of decks that simply can't answer our late-game threats profitably is guaranteed to increase because of this.
But wait! there's more! an inevitable rise in fatal pushes may just lead to a decrease in low-cmc high-p/t creatures that we can struggle to answer early on. (this may backfire slightly and lead to one or two more angler's than we'd like, but oh well)
there's other potential benefits to come from this too, but personally, even if the list stops here i'm rather pleased.
i think the main thing that could stand to really screw us in all this is if tron, of any variety, picks up steam.
also, @okoSheep, if U-tron is only our 2nd worst MU, what's worse by your estimation? personally i've not found more trouble with any other deck than U-tron.
sorry, i phrased it kinda weird. i was saying U-tron is the exception to our across the board good control MU's. i've only ever beaten a good U-Tron player once, and that was with akroma.
Ignoring tier 3 stuff you shouldn't bother worrying about like U-Tron, we already annihilate that MU.
Kill their pitiful clocks early, do nothing mid, play around their now-worthless counters late.
Our worst case scenario is an unanswered T2 tasigur or nahiri.
And nahiri hardly counts as a concern, T4 Nahiri, pass -> T4 koth, bash nahiri, pass.
We MB relics to slow their delve and shutdown their snaps/neuter their k-commands.
Blood moon nearly auto-wins when landed.
All our threats are highly relevant vs jeskai, and PWs are amazing vs the rest.
The scry is just immeasurably powerful
If it's etb were better or it blanked significant removal, then sure. But as is its a no-go.
Im okay with that though considering how bonkers chandra tod is. Outside of machinegunning tokens, there's nothing she cant beat pyromaster at.e
Hopefully we can get 1, maybe even 2, new cards to accompany her that have scry. If there's one thing id kill for, it's more scry.
Here's
Here's
2 scrying sheets
3 mouth of ronom
17 snow-covered mountain
REMOVAL
4 lightning bolt
4 skred
4 magma jet
3 volcanic fallout
THREATS
4 boros reckoner
3 koth of the hammer
2 chandra, pyromaster
2 stormbreath dragon
1 sarkhan, the dragonspeaker
4 relic of progenitus
4 molten rain
2 blood moon
1 commune with lava
3 chalice of the void
4 dragon claw
2 blood moon
4 anger of the gods
2 boil
lose game 1 by keeping a slow, but still reasonable, hand.
game 2 i win going T1 > pass, T2 > chalice x=1, T3 moon.
game 3 i win off of 2 dragon's claws, a moon, and a board full of reckoners.
MATCH 2 vs jeskai nahiri, win 2-0
win both games by playing a better control deck =P
but for real
game 1 quickly devolves into draw-go-EoTburn. but he decides to tap-out T6 for a collonade attack. crack-back with a moon and win
game 2 becomes draw-go, with less burn, right out of the gate. he lands an on-curve nahiri and my only answer is a chandra. Okay. spend the next 13 or so turns keeping nahiri honest with chandra, and tossing some incidental damage her way here and there. he tries to keep my chandra from ulting too, but A: he runs less burn, B: he cares less about chandra's ult than i do about nahiri's, & C: i have 2 relics in play to stop snaps. eventually, the turn before his nahiri would ult, i EoT commune for x=4 (leaving up 3 mana for leaks), pop both relics, untap & ult chandra. i blow up his 2 basic islands (moon was in play at this point), kill his geist of saint traft with a fallout, send the 2 damage from fallout and the 6 damage from 3 magma jets at nahiri. scry 2x3 off the jets. and play another relic. the game was mine to lose from there.
MATCH 3 vs infect, win 2-1
game 1 is lost in a similar fashion to G1M1, keep on 'Okayish' hand and hope my opponent isnt playing something terribly aggresive. which is retarded of me concidering i'd seen him earlier tonight playing infect. in the end i only saw 1 removal spell. not that i had too many turns to dig for more.
games 2 & 3 were both cakewalks. game 2's opening hand was 3 removal (1 magma jet), 1 relic, 3 lands. game 3's opening hand (after mulligan) was 3 removal (2 magma jets), 1 relic, 2 lands.
MATCH 4 vs boros burn, win 2-0
he flooded game 1, and i mean flooded. more lands than i saw by 50% at least. AND ofc uses tons of fetches and only ran 17 to begin with.
he starved game 2, though it wasn't nearly as bad... initially. he was stuck on 2, but i molten rained his second land T3.
not much to say here, except for the molten rain, i could've been playing any deck at any skill level and won.
but i've played against this deck a number of times before and feel reasonably confident in my preparedness for it. especially now that so much of my SB is so relevant against them.
i'd love to show back up come Sunday evening with a GP report, but alas, despite it being a 30m drive from me, i can't make it to the GP. riperino~
The majority of games where koth is unanswered, I win before he can ult.
Plus I've survived somewhere between 1/3 and 1/4 of the hasty emrakuels that've been thrown at me. Usually from through the breach decks, I just sac my lands, untap my threats and kill them. I had a game with nahiri vs storm breath where I just let nahiri ult, then killed him at 5.
Meanwhile, the only 2 games I've ever lost with koth ult, had come from aggressively terrible misplays on my part.
Koth isn't useless on board when you're behind, so long as they have 3 or less power on board, he's basically "deal 8 damage, fog 2(+) times". So unless you're significantly behind, he's still useful. Very useful infact, won plenty of games by drawing a stormbreath, sarkhan, or those last few burn spells I needed in the midst of that 2 turn fog to close out the game.
That said, I don't like multiples, it can be bursty, which is nice. But it's almost exclusively bursty.
@taheenmage
It's a blackhand trooper from c&c
@okosheep
I know personally, I replaced koth #4 with chandra #2. Considering the rest of my deck makes slight sacrifices in the grind area for better late-game-bursts, it's been nice having one more grind-house card in the list.
Scourge is impossible to permanently remove and is easier to cast.
Apples to oranges, so just make sure the one you pick matches the rest of your deck.
That said, getting 2 in hand isn't great, plus its not ideal vs aggro (which is rather common obv). I love the one-of.
Cut a koth just cause legendary clause, was having too many games where I ran into more koths than I needed. 4 is still fine, but I personally prefer 3.
Moon was always a 2-3 MB, rest in the SB card to me.
I recently cut 2 Mountains for 2 more relics MB cause I was seeing just slightly more land than I wanted. I have had 1/20 games (roughly, probably slightly higher) where I have mana issues. So ill probably swap a mouth of ronom for a mountain.
But, I've looooooved mouth of ronom. Uncounterable, colorless removal that freely comes from the mana base. It just costs so little to run. Especially in scourge builds.
I expected to have more issues casting reckoner than I actually have, the few times where I do have an issue, I can find a reasonable alternative play. Or just play moon and fix my mana.
I definitely understand what you're saying, and I do agree to some extent.
Like I said, GDD's biggest strength is flashing back value spells. I just don't think we have access to enough of them yet. Not saying we strictly don't, just that its not enough for my tastes personally.
It's not that I value aggression/explosiveness over grinding out value. It's that I want everything to pull at least 2 roles when I'm investing 4+ mana in it.
And generally I like having my threats all overlap on aggression.
The idea isn't to play aggressively, but to be better able to switch gears when appropriate to a better result.
But here's the list.
3 mouth of ronom
17 snow-covered mountain
4 lightning bolt
4 skred
4 magma jet
3 volcanic fallout
3 koth of the hammer
2 chandra, pyromaster
2 stormbreath dragon
1 sarkhan, the dragonspeaker
4 relic of progenitus
4 molten rain
2 blood moon
1 commune with lava
4 dragon claw
2 blood moon
4 anger of the gods
2 boil