To those curious about splashing trophy in grixis (I know you're out there) I decided to get in a handful of matches today/yesterday with it. I'm never afraid of testing things that seem weird or bad just to confirm my thoughts after all. I played a mostly standard list with a forest over a third field and an overgrown tomb over a creeping tar pit and cut terminate and dreadbore for the trophies. I'll be honest it seems awesome on paper, but in practice it just wasn't worth it at all. In the games where it was my only kill spell early the land was a big deal and the times where I hit something I normally couldn't it either didn't matter or the damage was done by it resolving. The one exception to that was blood moon, but splashing a fourth color to answer it isn't where we want to be.
Furthermore the mana was incredibly awkward and ended up being extremely painful. It made cryptic a nonstarter when I needed green early and knot was basically impossible to cast on curve several times. All in all I gave it a real shot and it isn't worth stretching the deck to fit it. Such a shame that we don't get to run it, but that's the way it goes. So take my word for it or try it yourself, but it's cost is far higher than we are able to pay.
EDIT: on the Cryptic topic ... look at the TOP 12 decks on MtgGoldFish and tell me where we want Cryptic :
Humans : no
UW control : sure
Burn : not worth (need triple blue, probly gonna take damage for it)
HScales : no
Spirits : no
Tron : yes (probly the only Matchup where it really hurts me)
Hollow one : no
Jund : not really
Storm : heh ...
Jeskai control : OK
Mardu pyro : not really
BridgeVine : no
Overall 3 matchups out of 12 where i like Cryptic Command... Am i wrong ?
I disagree with the sentiment of "we're good in the late game so we don't need X late game card so it should be cut." The reason we're good in the late game is because of these powerful cards, not in spite of them. Naturally there is a point where it's overkill, but the more you cut cryptics, Kommands, and AV/Search the worse you are passed turn ten. Deciding to cut cards because they do what the deck is trying to do doesn't make much sense when you aren't replacing them with something that is at the very least a compromise so that you don't lose your edge where you're supposed to have one.
I also don't agree with most of your assessments on where cryptic is good or not. Of the decks you listed that you say you don't want cryptic, here are the ones I believe this is incorrect: Jund, Storm, Mardu pyro, HScales, Spirits, Burn. That brings your count up to 9/12 decks where I believe that cryptic is good. Granted the range of fine to awesome varies on each deck, but cryptic is good enough in each of those matches that I'd only trim a copy at most. Let me give you a brief deck by deck run down on why I think cryptic is either great or just worth having against each of them.
Jund/Mardu: I combined these two because they are effectively the same strategy of thoughtseize midrange. These matches always come to a top deck war with only one or two cards from their deck that are real swingy plays. You need cryptic to stop them or at the very least to maintain parity. In super long attrition battles any form of 2-for-1 is valuable and that's exactly what cryptic is. Not to mention the many novel situations you find yourself in and the versatility is incredibly good here.
Storm: The less discard you have the more you're going to be leaning on permission and cryptic counters spells. Even though it isn't especially efficient as a counter spell, you still need to have one for every cast of past in flames or gifts ungiven. Card advantage is also important here post board because they are well equipped to go the distance with us and once again cryptic fulfills both roles of protection and advantage.
Hardened scales: As the name implies this is different than the traditional affinity lists. Against the classic version of affinity I would cut all of my cryptics because you needed stuff on turn two or three and anything past that was meaningless as their cards simply stopped mattering. This isn't true at all of the scales versions. A ballista on turn two is whatever, but one on turn seven is a big problem. The same goes for hanger back and ravagers, the deck just has a lot more late game than before. I take the approach of trying to stop the pay offs rather than the enablers which means I always want some number of hard counters in my deck.
Spirits: The only reason why cryptic is bad here is because of spell queller, outside of that it's another 2-for-1 that we can lean on to stay ahead. So few of their cards are dangerous, but the ones that are we really want to have a cryptic for because even on turn 20 they can turn the game around in a hurry.
Burn: So few of our cards actually do anything in this match up and cryptic does something. Four is a massive amount for a glorified cancel, but all we want are two to three kill spells and then a bunch of permission with a single threat to ride. Again, it's not great but I'd always rather have a cryptic than a Kommand, jace, or ancestral.
TL;DR: Versatility is important in modern and our goal is to get ahead on cards. Cryptic does both.
I just discussed Thought Erasure with a couple guys who go to big modern tourneys regularly, one on grixis, one on jund. They know a lot more than I do about modern, the current meta etc, one writes for Modern Nexus, and there is concensus that the card is borderline unplayable.
I also don't get the "is better than cryptic" thing. If you're casting Erasure against Afinity, Burn, Infect, Hollow One, Dredge, Dredgevine, or Spirits, it's a losing play because you simply cant afford to durdle like that. Those are the matchups the Grixis Archetype struggles most against, and Erasure does nothing to make them better.
This is a rule I have when assessing cards: does it help my bad matchups? e.g. I dont care about cards that are good gainst UW Control, Storm, Elves, or GBx. Those matchups are by far good enough.
Against fast decks, the additional 1cmc will cost you far more than 2 life. There are so many examples: thoughtseize + removal spell (e.g. hitting a Flameblade Adept vs just casting Erasure: erasure nets you 2 life compared to Seize. The removal spell you cast alongside Seize probably nets you 4-5 life. Another: you having to choose between removing a mana dork (which is a must most of the time) and disrupting their hand and being able to do woth. I'm sure you've heard about the rule of thumb that turn 1-3 are the most important ones in any match, for control decks too, and the deck that is ahead on turn 4 is overwhelmingly likely to win the match. Running a 2cmc discard spell is such a massive tempo loss that, if you will, it decreases your chance significantly of being ahead on turn 4. Including turn 4, you have access to 10 mana optimally, 9 effectively (by either missing a land drop or casting a tapped land like a manland). the cost of Erasure deprives you of 11% of your resources (16,6% if you exclude turn 4). Burn WANTS you to run cards like that. Thats how they win. You trading down in tempo.
I dont mean to sound arrogant, but I think (and everybody I've talked to about this agrees) that Erasure is a bad card and gets punished hard by fast decks.
One of the best plays when running Snap alongside discard is discard into t3 snap-discard. not possible with Erasure.
I expect that erasure will make you mulligan more, will loose you games to faster decks, and that you will side it out a lot.
PS: If GBx takes care of your Azcanta on turn 10, you've already won 3 times over. The card is that strong. But again, this may be specific to my build, as i can push the flip early with thought scour. Its very common for it to flip on turn 4, and once it flips, even if they have Trophy for it, the damage is done. Say it flips on turn 5. I've scried off it 3 times, which is commonly valued at 1,5 cards. It flips on turn 5, so even if they try to kill it in my upkeep, i have 5 mana open, which means i can either protect it and hold up a counter/removal spell for their next play, or activate it, get a clean 2for1 (land + spell) AND hold up 2 mana, again for counter magic or removal. Adding the scry, azcanta has been a 3,5 for 1, and GBx is usually so far behind the game is over.
If you think Assassin's Trophy takes care of Azcanta cleanly in any stage of the game, that means you have no actual experience with it. The scry alone every turn can be enough to beat GBx handily. I have tested it a ton, so you might as well take my word for it. I've tested it to death. I'm not saying you should run it, but it's often my best card in grindy matchups.
All that said, you're free to build your deck however you like. If it works for you (i.e. you win more than you loose and the deck is fun to pilot), more power to you. I haven't tested Erasure, so I cant speak from experience. The best thing you can do is record your matches/wins-losses etc in a spreadsheet. It will give you a lot of clarity about how your deck is actually performing (it did for me, and made obvious what needed changing).
I'm not saying erasure is better than cryptic and definitely not in a general sense. I'm simply stating that in the games where cryptic is too slow to have an impact erasure is more likely to do something. It might not be a great something, but it will be useful before you die. Please don't make the "if you don't agree with X then you have no experience with it" claims, not only is that never a valid argument, it always comes off as incredibly condescending. Not saying that is your intent of course, but this is the internet and that is how those sorts of statements always sound when you are only communicating through text. Not being rude at all, just a heads up. Also I'm not saying that your experiences are wrong or never happened, but they have not matched my experiences as often as they differ.
Different people have different experiences and in my games against BGx it isn't uncommon for them to out grind me when I can't keep azcanta around for a couple turns. I don't care if I got a few filters off of it and a single card that might or might not be impactful, it has to stick around to keep my head above water. However a single cast of AV is enough to win the majority of fair matches, especially the ones where search is easily answered. Against the fast decks I almost never have the time to cast a spell that doesn't interact, but I can usually find a single mana to spare to drop an AV and sink the rest of my time and resources into interaction.
Lastly I have been keeping notes of the games I've played with my current list and have been paying attention to the games where a different discard spell would have made a difference in the outcome and so far erasure would have preformed better than IoK or brutality overall. This is from the last several PPTQs and IQs I've played in so the format as a whole is different, but the individual games and situations where I was casting them I would have preferred erasure to what I currently have more often than not. Different cards are just different, and there are times where one is miles better than the other but this is just an over all average of what I have found myself needing in order to change the outcome of the game.
One final thing on looking at new cards with in-game context is unmoored ego. I have found in the admittedly few games I've had against GY aggro decks casting it on turn five isn't as bad as I initially thought. Obviously it isn't amazing, but I have noticed that I could still engineer a situation where it has a strong impact. My first thoughts were that it would be fine on three but completely blank after that, but doesn't seem to always be the case. However in the games that I have been actively testing it has been a very solid card outside of the turn 1-2 "look at me I'm so skilled" draws where only surgical and leyline would do anything at all. Still hopeful with this addition.
Damn your list looks neat! Im glad you picked up on Vendilion Clique They are just great (my promo version even more xD). I really like the 2-3 fast land as well... i'm gonna have to try thought erasure if you say its so great. Do you think tasigur is really necessary without Thought Scour ? I feel like some other card would do so much better here (I run JVP instead but im not convinced either)
Also, what do you think about running 1 of the new Ral Planeswalker instead of the ultimatum, its much easier on mana, can kill pretty much anything in the format and draw cards... He's not teferi but so much better than jace in our deck IMO! -8 is also just GG
Tasigur is fine without scours actually. You can think of him the same way that UW approaches Teferi, he's a three mana spell that you have to wait a turn to cast. I regularly cast him on turn three or four after fetching and interacting without any trouble. But not having scour makes him much worse against remand and reflector mage, but those cards aren't a big concern right now. Humans is already a great match up for us and I don't mind them spending time to bounce him as that doesn't add much power to the board for them. It's pretty rare that I need Tas to stabilize the board, just doom blade everything and he'll stick eventually.
As for Ral, I don't really like him in modern, he is just too expensive for too little of an effect. Perhaps if his minus could be pointed at their head I'd be more high on him as a draw engine plus win condition combo, but alas. Cruel and Bolas flips at least ends the game on the spot and if I wanted a five mana advantage bomb to cast I'd just stick with Keranos, god of storms. He has never been bad in modern and is super difficult to answer with celestial purge being one of the only clean answers. He is even immune to the trophy which is a big plus for him as well.
Do you mean because GBx will be running Assassin's Trophy? Because I can assure you, them shooting our Azcanta with it is a non-issue. I have said this before, and I have tested quite a bit against GBx. 2 scenarios: 1) they shoot down Azcanta early (turn 2-3) to dodge our countermagic, in which case we get an untapped land that puts us WAY up in tempo (curving into KCommand, Cryptic or Snap-spell is game-winning against GBx). 2) they wait to not give us this tempo advantage early, in which case it becomes trivial to protect our Azcanta with discard/counter magic.
From my experience, Assassin's Trophy is NOT a reason to not run Azcanta. The compensation we get is enough by far. (on that note, Spell Snare is sure to be a powerhose going foward, because it hits A's T specifically and is great against GBx in general).
EDIT: my build may be better equipped to capitalize on that tempo gain because it's geared more towards tempo than just pure grinding.
I am also not sold on Thought Erasure. Might just prove too slow and clunky against faster decks.
Concerning your deck in general: You are obviously going for the late game hard, which is fine. You're well equipped to pulverize midrange and control. The big ifs will be combo decks, big mana and hyper aggro decks, all three of which you honestly don't seem very well positioned against. e.g. hands full of Erasures, maybe Ultimatum, an Ancestral and a threat will instantly die to faster decks. I'm not saying other grixis builds cant clunk up like that, it just seems much more likely for yours.
I'm not worried about trophy hitting search on turn two or three. I'm worried about it getting hit on turn ten where the extra land doesn't matter any more which is when it's going to be cast by anybody that's aware of the downside. I'm not going to assume all of my opponents are are going to play poorly and give me a free land and a card from their hand right at the start of the game. Not to mention that field can just hit azcanta and only getting one card from it is still a real loss for us. Perhaps if my deck was heavier on threats then I wouldn't care as much about not having a consistent advantage, but as you mentioned this is a hard control deck and not staying up on resources is a problem.
Thought erasure being "clunky" against the mega hyper aggro decks is only barely true, but it still does some work against them and is miles better than cryptic in those games. I personally hate cryptic against a lot of modern decks and side it out for this very reason like humans and trim some against scales affinity and spirits. Erasure at least does something early against them. Meanwhile the thoughtseize with value added actually makes the combo matches much better when combined with the rest of my hand disruption so those matches aren't as bad as you would think. Seriously, just try erasure and you'll see it's not as bad as you think. I'd much rather have proper thoughtseize of course, but we can't afford the life loss or a 100% dead card in the late game or I'd be on four every day. The two life isn't free and the Surveil 1 is a real benefit.
The only big mana deck that worries me is tron because they win on turn three and there's no help for that which we can rationally main deck so that's not worth considering. Any of the primevil titan decks are still super easy, even game one, because of the permission and erasure also does a lot of work there as well. The same goes for storm and kci where all the right tools exist in the deck. But just like any control deck in modern we have to not draw ten doom blades against combo and we're live to win the first game while post board things get incredibly good for us.
All of this is before unmoored ego gets sided in which has been a house against all the random nonsense that I used to struggle with such as ad nauseum or totally random loam decks. It does a fantastic job of patching up the holes that control has against "the weird" in modern.
After more testing and a bunch more matches with grixis post GRN, I've settled on a list that I'm going to be running for a while. It is quite similar to my previous builds, but with a few small tweaks between now and then.
The ultimatum can be traded for a glimmer of genius or another bolas, but I do want it to be a draw spell or haymaker effect and prefer it to not be a permanent, especially not search for azcanta as that card is under heavy assault right now. Most cards that could fit into this spot are going to be bad against combo by default, so I'd like one that has the highest upside and so far ultimatum has been fine meeting those requirements.
The hand disruption package has been phenomenal between clique and erasure. Between that and the permission it has made the combo decks quite easily managed in the first game when I don't just 'get got' on turn three. Postboard it has been great with Ego as a trump card in many different matches. Even though it can be too slow against tron on the draw, if they don't have it assembled on board by three the game just ends and I'm ok with that.
Still zero cantrips in the deck and I haven't missed them. The surveil from erasure fulfills the role of making sure you have lands coming when you need them and business when you don't quite well. The fact that they can take a CoCo, Jace, or a Baral has been incredibly important and often game defining. That's not to mention that they aren't blank cards on turn twenty, they're not great but they still do something while IoK or thoughtseize are actually dead cards.
one cool thing i am noticing about the grixis archetype is that sideboards are starting to converge more than they used. to. Its like people have finally started to agree what its best sideboard options are (brutality, anger, damnation, extraction, dispel, countersquall, staticaster, fulminator)
I'd say that this is most likely a product of the format as a whole coalescing into a few very narrow archetypes and heavily pushing out every other deck. Two graveyard aggro decks, two control (not including grixis), two disruptive aggro, two spell combo, and then there's always tron. And it just so happens that two of them we crush, one is slightly good for us, and the other two just curb stomp us. Everything else in the format just instantly rolls over dead against at least half of those decks. This means that our SB can be very focused and we can mostly ignore everything else that can show up in an open field.
Hi! New modern player, but long time standard player for MTG. I have always loved the Grixis Control archetype, and when I decided I wanted to play modern I spent a lot of time researching the different 'meta' decks, and decided I didn't like most of the top meta decks, and found I really liked Grixis Control a lot and wanted to try it. I first started by watching a few Cory Burkhartt videos, and a few other MTG streamers including Gods_Shadow. I liked it, I wanted to try it. So I built a deck (You can look at the current decklist here: https://tappedout.net/mtg-decks/ravaged-control/ ) and went to my LGS.
Boy did I have a rough night! You can see the details in the link I shared above, but basically I went 0-2 against Tron (first match up had to be tron, obviously) 1-2 against UWR Ad Nauseam (I should have won this match up, chose my counters poorly), and went 1-1-1 against Orzhov Value Town? (all I saw initially was Lilly of the Veils and tons of Thoguhtseize/Inquisition, second game I steamed ahead and even managed to flip Bolas, last game I got flooded with tokens that I wasn't expecting and hadn't sideboarded in my Izzet Staticasters or Anger of the Gods).
Anyways, I had a bad night - I think mostly because as a control player you have to know your match ups, and being new to modern I do not. I thought I'd get a better feel from all the videos I watched but really the only thing I recognized was Tron, which I think in general is just a bad match up. If y'all don't mind I would appreciate feedback on my deck list or even tips on what I should look out for and how I can become a better modern player.
Thanks!
Welcome to the Grixis Cabal! Best advice I can give you to get better in modern in general is to lose. A lot. And you're already starting on that so good job, hehe! Seriously, it just takes time to get the experience required to know what is important and when. It's the same as control in standard except you have a lot more decks, threats, and answers to consider. Even though Corey's videos are very dated at this point, they're still a good resource for somebody new to the deck to learn some of the unique play patterns we have available to us.
Your deck list is mostly fine, albeit a touch heavy on the discard. The biggest suggestion that I'll insist on is to cut the electrolyzes for almost anything else. You get really choked at three mana between them Kommand and snaps which makes it too difficult to deploy your spells effectively. I'd recommend some tasigur's and scours and perhaps an extra land. I've never liked 3x Field with only 24 total lands personally. I don't know if you have any budget or card availability concerns, but I'd like to see something like this to start with:
The only time I've had trouble with spirits is turn two geist and CoCo into double captain in response to a kill spell. Outside of that the games have been very manageable so long as you don't wait on your removal and let them untap in the early turns. IoK is good here, but it doesn't hit coco which can be more dangerous than GoST depending on your build. You just have to really, really make sure you don't play into their stuff which isn't especially difficult when you know what they can have. The wanderer has only ever been an annoyance rather than a serious problem that delays me by several turns, you just can't wait on casting your spells. Just dump your spot removal the moment you have a target and don't let them assemble a board and the only thing you have to worry about is a "gotcha" from GoST. That's been my experience with the match before GRN and I've only played against it twice with my Bolas build and both matches were the same as previous builds, but with the ability to block.
EDIT: I'm going to just assume that you and I have simply had wildly different experience with the variance of the game. Perhaps your opponents ran exceptionally well or mine especially bad. When spirits has the right disruption at the right time with a CoCo to top it off the deck looks unebatable, but that does need a lot to go right. All I can say for certain is that I've never had a problem when I focus on not running face first into their disruption in the opening turns.
So far, i feel like Dispel is the only counterspell efficient enough to stop Collected Company. Izzet Staticaster has a fair amount of targets (wanderer, thalia, hierarch, selfless spirit, rattlechains, phantasmal image), but unless we start running heavy targeted discard mainboard ( I know you are running 4 or so, Gods_Shadow, which probably helps you quite a bit), this matchup seems horrendous for us.
Does anybody have secret tech i'm not thinking about? am at my witt's end tbh.
Against any cavern/vial deck I cut all of my permission or at the very least I cut my cryptics. They're the type of aggro deck that wants you to have a glut of spot removal rather than sweepers with the main problem being that Kommand isn't a reliable doom blade. You want to approach the spirits match the same way you would traditional affinity and burn. That is to say don't get fancy and don't try to eek out that extra value, just cast your spells. You want to dump you hand as fast as they dump theirs and respect CoCo as long as you can. If you're able to stop the first CoCo your natural card advantage will get you ahead. If you're on discard prioritize casting it over removal to pull coco from their hand because that and GoST are the only good cards in their deck. Thought Erasure is going to be a big help against them when it comes out to let you take their two good cards with value added and not hurting you.
I agree that you do want dispel in your deck post board specifically for company and I'd bring in all the copies I have. Knot is fine on the play, but still less than ideal because of cavern/vial making it hard to find a live target. This is also another match up where Bolas is sweet because he is going to be bigger than everything they have, gets another card out of their hand and being able to cast him with a bolt for a potential queller is very easy to engineer.
Is there a place we can find your mammoth sized post?
I'm sure it'll be easy to find a spot in the deck if you're having regular matches against Valakut, Tron, or KCI. It's all a matter of where that hate balances out. Are we going to dedicate 4 SB slots right away to send a message to the meta? Are we going to test the waters with 1 then up the numbers? I'm sure many will be mixed on how to approach that part and it will have to do with their current meta.
I have zero (seriously) of the three mentioned decks in my meta, so even though I'm picking up Ego, I won't be listing them right away.
No I don't have it posted somewhere else online. As much as I'd like to, I don't write for any major sites. If you're interested I can PM it to you, pretty sure there's isn't a practical size limit on PM's.
1) Seems silly to test a card by playing 1 in the Sideboard. If you want to test it you should run multiple so you actually draw it (and draw it early!)
A better way to test one card specifically is to put it right on top of your deck after you shuffle up for a game. You'll always have it right when you want it and that will tell you right quick whether or not it's as good as you think it is. You learn if it's effective right away or if you find yourself having to craft a game plan around it. Then you can play a normal game and on turn seven or so you put it into your hand rather than drawing a random card to see how well it plays in the mid to late game.
Granted this isn't "natural" testing, but that's not the point. If you are only interested in testing exactly one card in exactly one match up then this is the best way to find out a cards worth in game without having to play out hundreds of matches.
It's been a long, long time since black blue and green were in the same deck and even longer still since they were in a competitive deck. With the rotation and printing of Assassin's Trophy that seems to have changed. This will be my opening salvo at attempting to find the best control deck for the format. With trophy making things difficult for the traditional UW builds, sultai is my pick for best control deck moving forward and beginning with the best removal spells available seems like a great starting point to build.
Why Sultai?
Assassin's Trophy. That's the reason. Glad we had this conversation.
Ok. Why not UW, Jeskai, or Grixis?
Assassin's Trophy. Yes that is the entire reason to avoid other color combinations and dive in head first with the bugs. Both because we can play it and because we aren't soft to it. We aren't reliant on Ixalan's Binding to deal with walkers (trophy gets them right back) or enchantments like Seal Away to answer creatures and our finishers are spells and hexproof threats. Going BUG gives you the best removal spells in trophy and contempt, you get the best finisher and mirror breaker combo with carnage tyrant all wrapped up in a sweet inevitability engine with gaea's blessing and The Mirari Conjecture.
One less obvious, but especially important reason to go with sultai is the manabase and a clean mana base is facilitated by, you guessed it, the trophy. Having access to "BG - Kill A Thing" means we don't need to run field of ruin to handle utility lands like azcanta or the flip side of Legion's Landing. That combined with two immediately supported guilds gives us all the duals we need. Furthermore we have a reusable draw engine from gaea's blessing which means we don't have to run a copious number of arch of orazca to help keep the cards flowing for when our recursive draw elements get turned into basic lands. We end up not needing a single colorless land and the ability to run a good amount of basics to take advantage of any opposing trophies and to easily cast our own.
As we learned in the previous format, UW control struggled against decks that started with 4xVraska's Contempt or were aggressive enough to clear Teferi easily. Not relying on a walker that gives us a completely random card off the top before dying gives us a leg up on decks who plan to employ this strategy. With a pile of divination effects, better live top decks, and a draw engine that always gives us a good spell makes for a clear advantage.
We do give up the purity of Teferi as a win condition and lack a hard sweeper like cleansing nova, but we are well set up to play the point and click removal game. Should tokens become a thing to make the infinite kill spell plan difficult, we do have Ritual of Soot available to cleanly answer that strategy. Simply put, BUG checks all the boxes you want checked with a control deck. Power. Versatility. Clean answers to literally everything and absolute inevitability.
As you can see we have answers to all the major players of the format. Seven ways to eat a troublesome walker, six counterspells, and a play set of trophy lets us eat annoying artifacts or enchantments. Ritual of Soot to answer super go-wide plans, Vona's Hunger for hexproof threats, and thought erasure to answer anything else before it comes down. We are able to stop something in hand, on the stack, or on the battlefield. We are not relying on Azcanta or walkers as hard as previous control decks which makes Assassin's Trophy much less effective against us if Teferi was our primary source of card advantage. With The Mirari Conjecture plus Gaea's Blessing engine, we are also well equipped to use the extra mana that we could get from the trophy as well and never losing access to our long term advantage.
The lack of Search for Azcanta might put off some players, but it is a way for us to reduce the effectiveness of trophy as much as possible. All of our draw engines happen immediately with our divination effects or give us value before being transformed into a basic island. Relying on something to stick around on the battlefield in a world of trophies and contempts is a rather dubious plan. Focusing on spell based card advantage is the best way to ensure that you're never cut off from maintaining a material advantage.
Our primary way to actually end the game is simply decking them with their draw step while we sit around reshuffling answers with gaea's blessing indefinitely. The first blessing puts back three counters or kill spells and the second blessing gets back two draw spells and the first blessing and we can repeat this until the end of the game. While not as clean as doing the same thing with a teferi emblem hanging around, it does the trick just as well. The sample list includes the single carnage tyrant as a concession to our opponents not giving us the concession and will kill through anything quite fast. It also allows us to win game one against any deck playing Nexus of Fate as that card's mere existence prevents the use of decking as the sole win condition.
The overarching game plan of the deck past the traditional control strategy is to eventually recycle our entire deck. Gaea's blessing ensures that the top of our deck is going to be more live than our opponent's and prevents us from not only running out of cards in our library, but also prevents us from running out of the right answers. If we have to spend our edicts early to stay alive we can still find them again and again if hexproof threats start rolling off the top. Because of this infinite recursion aspect the only things that we are truly afraid of are dedicated hate for our blessing engine like Unmoored Ego and banefire.
With Banefire being in the format it may be correct to run Pelakka Wurm as the dedicated win condition. The wurm gains a huge amount of life when it enters and some extra value on the way out. The only real downside of this swap is that a hard exile effect like contempt sends us to the dedicated mill plan. One potential consideration is going down to only one copy of blessing as you can still recur it indefinitely with the mirari conjecture which gives you an extra main deck spot for another answer or hard win con. Only time will tell which is correct.
Thoughts on Removal
Our removal suite is going to be changing from week to week, which is typical in standard control decks. The only spot removal spells that will always be in the deck are the contempts and trophies. After that we will have to decide if we want to lean towards hard removal like Cast Down and Vona's Hunger to fight green stompy and their hexproof threats. After that is the red aggro decks where we'll want to shy away from edicts and focus more on Ritual of Soot and moment of craving.
Should control variants become equally as popular as the midrange and control decks then we may want to cut our additional removal entirely. Without gear hulks in the format, essence scatter loses all of its value against control so this will be an extremely delicate balance. Because of all of this, there really is no point in suggesting a "this is what you should do" set up for spot removal outside of the two base inclusions with the caveat that we want something in addition to assassin's trophy for early game kill spells.
Card Advantage Options
There are no shortage of great options to get ahead on raw card count in standard and choosing the best one depends on several factors. First of all is how much red aggro are you expecting to face? How often will you find yourself in a control mirror? These questions must be answered before you select your draw spells. Here are a few suggestions of which spell might fit best in a particular meta.
Chemister's Insight - This inspiration variant puts you up one card on the first cast and another on the jump-start cast making it a grand total three for one with some finesse required. The biggest draw to this spell is the instant speed nature and the ability to filter dead removal spells in the mirror. Meanwhile it has the down side of the 4-CMC and the requirement to have a card to pitch when you cast it a second time. A solid card, but it does ask a bit of you for everything to go right.
Secrets of the golden city - Fine early and great later on makes this a solid middle of the road choice. The double blue cost may be a bit tense at times, but a three mana ancestral in the midgame is still very powerful. This should most likely be your default choice until you have done more testing with your list against the predicted metagame.
District Guide - While not card draw in the traditional blue sense, this is still a 2-for-1 spell that might have some added value. It does turn on opposing removal, but what it does is help fix your mana and provide you with a nice speed bump that can harass any walkers you can't immediately clear. If you want to go this route you'll want to include some additional basic lands and perhaps a singleton guild gate to make the trigger worthwhile. Another minor point worth mentioning is that if you're running Secrets of the Golden City this is yet another permanent to help you get the city's blessing.
The guide also fills the role of allowing you to run a lower land count than you typically would to avoid flooding while helping you still hit all of your land drops. What it really comes down to is how useful is the body and is it better than simply running anticipate. I can easily see a situation where this is a 4-of value play that is mediocre game one, but is more useful post board when all of the removal comes out.
Notion Rain - A sweet call back to the very powerful Read the Bones with the surveil mechanic replacing scry. We know from past experiences that this is a very powerful card, but the life loss is certainly not free. If you expect a lot of opponents to be aggressively attacking your life total this is not a good choice, especially since you plan to cast it 4-8 times a game. However in a slower, midrange centric meta this is one of the best choices. Even though it doesn't get you a third card, the surveil 2 that's tacked on makes up for that and in some cases may end up being superior.
Finishers
In the bug colors there isn't a perfectly pure and clean win condition such as Approach from the previous format or looping Teferi with an emblem. Furthermore, relying on walkers to get the job done is a bit risky due to the Trophy + Contempt combo making them exceptionally hard to stick around long enough. Luckily there are a few other options for us that are a bit more likely to go the distance.
Millstone - The original win condition of durdle do nothing control decks. It fights on a unique axis with the effect that now bears it's name of milling. With a perpetual loop of gaea's blessing this isn't exactly necessary to win the game by decking your opponent, but it can help accelerate the process by a huge amount which can be important. If you are playing online and don't want a creature based threat, one or two of these is highly recommended to prevent yourself from losing to the clock. Decking does have one glaring weakness however: Nexus of fate. If your opponent merely discards to hand size each turn pitching their nexus, you will never be able to kill them this way. This one tiny wrinkle might make a pure mill plan impossible to execute.
Carnage Tyrant - The implacable death lizard has been giving people fits for as long as it has been around. With the rotation of doomfall there will be much fewer decks that are running an answer outside of blocking. This is a much more reliable finisher than most options and checks all the right boxes. Hexproof, can't be countered and a way to punch through blockers in the form of trample. The seven power means it gets the game over in a hurry and can still trade with other control "mirror breakers" should the need arise.
Nezahal, Primal Tide - Another finisher that got better with the rotation, but this time it is from the lack of Disallow. Pitching several cards to save it only to have the return trigger stifled made the dino very sketchy, but now it is just one suitable option among many with a bit of card advantage tacked on to boot.
Sideboard Options
In our sideboards we do have a large amount of respectable directions to attack any given meta. First and foremost you have to decide which plan of attack you want for the control mirror because that will require the most dedicated slots. After that you must look closely at the aggro and midrange decks of the format and decide how many of what effects you will need. For ease of reading I will split up this section into Control Options and Aggro as there is very little overlap in utility.
Control Negate and Unwind - Extra counters are one of the few things you are certainly going to want and which combination depends on your strategy. The default tends to be a play set of negates before adding any extra counters in the side.
Thief of Sanity - A fantastic new addition to the "dimir specter" variants that threatens to get out of hand super fast. It's the Gonti that keeps on giving and is fantastic against any deck with little to no removal or blockers. Just like control mirrors. I'm a huge fan of this card and would recommend you give them a try first.
Mystic Archaeologist - The half way mark between the card advantage and aggro plan that beats down early and can draw a pile of cards later on. A slightly different version of Thief of Sanity, but still an option to consider if you're wanting a cheaper threat that might be a touch easier on the mana. The CMC is the main reason to choose this card over another as it is quite easy to slip in under permission even though it takes a long time to get value from it.
Nezahal, Primal Tide - An additional hard to answer threat with built in card advantage. As mentioned previously, the absence of a stifle effect really makes this card worth considering.
Duress - Thought Erasure in the main deck makes duress less of a home run, especially since it can't take the creature threats, but it still fulfills a certain role and the information gained is incredibly valuable.
Arguel's Blood Fast - Yes, this card is still in standard and will continue to give headaches to control players. This time though there is a cheap answer to it which means it is less of an instant win card. It is still going to be worth several cards if it resolves and if the card advantage plan is how you want to approach the mirror this is likely the best option.
Knight of Malice - If you want to go for the "Gotcha!" plan post-board then this is one of your better choices. The black-ish knight is at its best against the white based control decks of course, not just for the bonus power, but also to brick wall any tokens from History of Benalia that might come in.
Vine Mare - Another gotcha card for the control mirror. This one has the fun word "Hexproof" written on it which makes it almost impossible to be removed post-board. It being four mana does open it up to permission, but if you're heavy on the discard plan it can be quite easy to force through. Once you get to untap with it the game is going to end in very short order as you are able to counter the very few things they'll have to remove your threat.
Arch of Orazca - An extra land in a control mirror is always a good thing and one that draws cards is even better. With a number of playable answers to utility lands this might not be a great option if drawing cards is your primary motivation, but the extra land to draw into makes this a worthy consideration.
The Eldest Reborn - Should you want another option for a grindy late game card with some additional utility this has always been "fine." Never amazing, but always acceptable. It's another edict effect for vine mare or dinosaurs and can potentially steal a walker to win with. All around solid without being amazing.
Aggro Ritual of Soot - Even though The Chainwhirler is keeping token decks from being played, some number are still fine. With goblins being a semi-supported tribe and boros aggro looking to be quite good, having access to an effect that can clear the board is great to have in your list. Depending on the typical sizing of the aggro decks you can easily end up wanting a full set or just one. It is worth pointing out that golden demise is another possible option for a sweeper slot if costing one mana less ends up being important.
Moment of craving - If burn heavy, hyper-aggro decks are prominent then this will be your best card against them. This one requires the most context to be correct so any number from zero to four could end up being right on a given weekend.
Dead Weight - A sorcery speed disfigure isn't anything to be especially excited over, but this is our only option for turn one removal. The more popular Llanowar Elves are the more that you'll want these. Pay close attention to the general sizing of creatures as this could easily make its way into the main deck.
Cast down - For the bigger green decks where the ramp from Trophy can be a real liability this is your best spot removal spell and will always be good to have a couple copies around. There will always be a stray legend hanging around like Kari Zev or Tajic that you can't tag with this, so keep that in mind when deciding on your final count.
Pelakka Wurm - Even though this is quite the odd inclusion, it acts as a slightly better finisher against the aggro decks because of the life gain attached to it. The main reason to want this over a dinosaur is to get yourself out of Banefire range. If the unstoppable fireball is popular you can easily want more threats that gain you life to keep your head above water and not get got. Not to mention the fact that gaining seven life tends to win the game on its own as was shown with the first casting of Approach of the Second Sun. Depending on the metagame you expect, some number of these could even be considered for main deck play if the durability of carnage tyrant isn't necessary.
As you can see there are answers to everything that we could be facing down. From token swarms to walkers to hexproof threats, everything can be neatly answered with a single card. With a properly constructed 75, we could easily end up being favored against anything we want to be. It all comes down to having the correct configuration of removal and draw spells which won't be too difficult. Let's get the discussion started by posting our initial testing experiences and deck lists.
EDIT: Added a second, more "expected" looking deck list to the start.
I just wrote up a post to explain why all of our potential complaints against Ego (namely the cmc) are either not important or not worth considering when you actually acknowledge the context in which you'll be casting it. But it did end up being the size of a regular article, which I am prone to doing I admit, so I'll just sum it up real quick and post the entirety later if people happen to be interested.
The card disadvantage is a complete nonissue. When you side the card in you don't care about card advantage, you are preventing your opponent from winning the game and that is worth far more than a single card as evidence by us trying to field+surgical tron. The speed is also a nonissue because either we have no options before turn three or this is just a "medium-fine" option that will buy us several turns at minimum to address the real problem.
Again this is a super condensed version of my thoughts on the card, but I am very insistent that we all put our focus on working with the card and seeing if there is anything else we can do to build a game plan around it post board against combo decks and strategies that we are unfavored against.
Even though this card looks unplayable on the surface lets be fair. This is easily the coolest card spoiled so far. Again, I realize it's likely just bad, but reading it was really exciting and the flavor is off the charts. Yes connecting with her 3 times is likely no different than (insert favorite wincon here) but come on, this is like, triple the style points. Also, don't be surprised if this does show up in standard in a BUG midrange deck. Those colors have a lot of powerful threats that you have to get rid of or avoid and this one can end up as just a fine 2-of that can might win it all sometimes.
unmoored ego is a premium sibeboard card for us for sure. but i guess I wouldn't play a full set along with an extra copy of surgical, maybe a 1-2 split would do just fine. I would never walk out without at least 2 dedicated spot for graveyard hate.
and re: the previous post, I think keranos is a little too slow for mardu pyromancer, maybe its a good idea for me to run 2 copies of electrolyze ?
I like that Ego can still act as grave hate, even if you only get 3/4 bloodghasts or amalgams, the ones that can hang around are VERY manageable. Not to mention that we can always snap Ego if we really want to.
Keranos is definitely not too slow against mardu. We have enough business to manage the game until he can come down and if he does get hit with a thoughtseize, he does count as a creature in the yard so we can just Kommand him right back. Don't worry about activating him into a proper creature, it's just an unstoppable value engine that only dies to celestial purge which I doubt they are going to run.
Holy crap, I think we just got a playable Lobotomy effect with Unmoored Ego. I'll name valakut. I'll name Urza's Mine. I'll name Ad Nauseum. Grapeshot. Prime Time. I really believe that this makes our "eat all of your win cons" board plan against combo infinitely easier. Currently we try to blow up an urza piece and surgical it or surgical their grapeshots or other targets for the decks that have only one or two win cons. This card completely removes the need to jump through hoops to make it so they are incapable of winning. Granted it doesn't do anything against turn 3 tron on the play, but not much does and alpine moon barely covers that. Never the less, the fact that it takes lands is a big deal for us.
Far from a main deck inclusion obviously, but this does make a lot of games a lot easier to win. With a pile of discard and permission this could easily end up patching the leaks we have against the non-creature based combo decks. I've mentioned before that fair decks are very favorable for us and this just might solve our problems with some combo decks. Here's a deck I'm tinkering with considering all of the spoilers and what I think the meta might look like.
Furthermore the mana was incredibly awkward and ended up being extremely painful. It made cryptic a nonstarter when I needed green early and knot was basically impossible to cast on curve several times. All in all I gave it a real shot and it isn't worth stretching the deck to fit it. Such a shame that we don't get to run it, but that's the way it goes. So take my word for it or try it yourself, but it's cost is far higher than we are able to pay.
I disagree with the sentiment of "we're good in the late game so we don't need X late game card so it should be cut." The reason we're good in the late game is because of these powerful cards, not in spite of them. Naturally there is a point where it's overkill, but the more you cut cryptics, Kommands, and AV/Search the worse you are passed turn ten. Deciding to cut cards because they do what the deck is trying to do doesn't make much sense when you aren't replacing them with something that is at the very least a compromise so that you don't lose your edge where you're supposed to have one.
I also don't agree with most of your assessments on where cryptic is good or not. Of the decks you listed that you say you don't want cryptic, here are the ones I believe this is incorrect: Jund, Storm, Mardu pyro, HScales, Spirits, Burn. That brings your count up to 9/12 decks where I believe that cryptic is good. Granted the range of fine to awesome varies on each deck, but cryptic is good enough in each of those matches that I'd only trim a copy at most. Let me give you a brief deck by deck run down on why I think cryptic is either great or just worth having against each of them.
Storm: The less discard you have the more you're going to be leaning on permission and cryptic counters spells. Even though it isn't especially efficient as a counter spell, you still need to have one for every cast of past in flames or gifts ungiven. Card advantage is also important here post board because they are well equipped to go the distance with us and once again cryptic fulfills both roles of protection and advantage.
Hardened scales: As the name implies this is different than the traditional affinity lists. Against the classic version of affinity I would cut all of my cryptics because you needed stuff on turn two or three and anything past that was meaningless as their cards simply stopped mattering. This isn't true at all of the scales versions. A ballista on turn two is whatever, but one on turn seven is a big problem. The same goes for hanger back and ravagers, the deck just has a lot more late game than before. I take the approach of trying to stop the pay offs rather than the enablers which means I always want some number of hard counters in my deck.
Spirits: The only reason why cryptic is bad here is because of spell queller, outside of that it's another 2-for-1 that we can lean on to stay ahead. So few of their cards are dangerous, but the ones that are we really want to have a cryptic for because even on turn 20 they can turn the game around in a hurry.
Burn: So few of our cards actually do anything in this match up and cryptic does something. Four is a massive amount for a glorified cancel, but all we want are two to three kill spells and then a bunch of permission with a single threat to ride. Again, it's not great but I'd always rather have a cryptic than a Kommand, jace, or ancestral.
TL;DR: Versatility is important in modern and our goal is to get ahead on cards. Cryptic does both.
I'm not saying erasure is better than cryptic and definitely not in a general sense. I'm simply stating that in the games where cryptic is too slow to have an impact erasure is more likely to do something. It might not be a great something, but it will be useful before you die. Please don't make the "if you don't agree with X then you have no experience with it" claims, not only is that never a valid argument, it always comes off as incredibly condescending. Not saying that is your intent of course, but this is the internet and that is how those sorts of statements always sound when you are only communicating through text. Not being rude at all, just a heads up. Also I'm not saying that your experiences are wrong or never happened, but they have not matched my experiences as often as they differ.
Different people have different experiences and in my games against BGx it isn't uncommon for them to out grind me when I can't keep azcanta around for a couple turns. I don't care if I got a few filters off of it and a single card that might or might not be impactful, it has to stick around to keep my head above water. However a single cast of AV is enough to win the majority of fair matches, especially the ones where search is easily answered. Against the fast decks I almost never have the time to cast a spell that doesn't interact, but I can usually find a single mana to spare to drop an AV and sink the rest of my time and resources into interaction.
Lastly I have been keeping notes of the games I've played with my current list and have been paying attention to the games where a different discard spell would have made a difference in the outcome and so far erasure would have preformed better than IoK or brutality overall. This is from the last several PPTQs and IQs I've played in so the format as a whole is different, but the individual games and situations where I was casting them I would have preferred erasure to what I currently have more often than not. Different cards are just different, and there are times where one is miles better than the other but this is just an over all average of what I have found myself needing in order to change the outcome of the game.
One final thing on looking at new cards with in-game context is unmoored ego. I have found in the admittedly few games I've had against GY aggro decks casting it on turn five isn't as bad as I initially thought. Obviously it isn't amazing, but I have noticed that I could still engineer a situation where it has a strong impact. My first thoughts were that it would be fine on three but completely blank after that, but doesn't seem to always be the case. However in the games that I have been actively testing it has been a very solid card outside of the turn 1-2 "look at me I'm so skilled" draws where only surgical and leyline would do anything at all. Still hopeful with this addition.
Tasigur is fine without scours actually. You can think of him the same way that UW approaches Teferi, he's a three mana spell that you have to wait a turn to cast. I regularly cast him on turn three or four after fetching and interacting without any trouble. But not having scour makes him much worse against remand and reflector mage, but those cards aren't a big concern right now. Humans is already a great match up for us and I don't mind them spending time to bounce him as that doesn't add much power to the board for them. It's pretty rare that I need Tas to stabilize the board, just doom blade everything and he'll stick eventually.
As for Ral, I don't really like him in modern, he is just too expensive for too little of an effect. Perhaps if his minus could be pointed at their head I'd be more high on him as a draw engine plus win condition combo, but alas. Cruel and Bolas flips at least ends the game on the spot and if I wanted a five mana advantage bomb to cast I'd just stick with Keranos, god of storms. He has never been bad in modern and is super difficult to answer with celestial purge being one of the only clean answers. He is even immune to the trophy which is a big plus for him as well.
I'm not worried about trophy hitting search on turn two or three. I'm worried about it getting hit on turn ten where the extra land doesn't matter any more which is when it's going to be cast by anybody that's aware of the downside. I'm not going to assume all of my opponents are are going to play poorly and give me a free land and a card from their hand right at the start of the game. Not to mention that field can just hit azcanta and only getting one card from it is still a real loss for us. Perhaps if my deck was heavier on threats then I wouldn't care as much about not having a consistent advantage, but as you mentioned this is a hard control deck and not staying up on resources is a problem.
Thought erasure being "clunky" against the mega hyper aggro decks is only barely true, but it still does some work against them and is miles better than cryptic in those games. I personally hate cryptic against a lot of modern decks and side it out for this very reason like humans and trim some against scales affinity and spirits. Erasure at least does something early against them. Meanwhile the thoughtseize with value added actually makes the combo matches much better when combined with the rest of my hand disruption so those matches aren't as bad as you would think. Seriously, just try erasure and you'll see it's not as bad as you think. I'd much rather have proper thoughtseize of course, but we can't afford the life loss or a 100% dead card in the late game or I'd be on four every day. The two life isn't free and the Surveil 1 is a real benefit.
The only big mana deck that worries me is tron because they win on turn three and there's no help for that which we can rationally main deck so that's not worth considering. Any of the primevil titan decks are still super easy, even game one, because of the permission and erasure also does a lot of work there as well. The same goes for storm and kci where all the right tools exist in the deck. But just like any control deck in modern we have to not draw ten doom blades against combo and we're live to win the first game while post board things get incredibly good for us.
All of this is before unmoored ego gets sided in which has been a house against all the random nonsense that I used to struggle with such as ad nauseum or totally random loam decks. It does a fantastic job of patching up the holes that control has against "the weird" in modern.
1 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Vendilion Clique
Durdles
4 Ancestral Vision
1 Cruel Ultimatum
Removal
1 Anger of the Gods
1 Dreadbore
2 Terminate
1 Fatal Push
3 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
Non-Creature Interaction
3 Thought Erasure
2 Logic Knot
1 Spell Snare
3 Cryptic Command
1 Blood Crypt
1 Darkslick Shores
3 Field of Ruin
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Spirebluff Canal
2 Steam Vents
2 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
3 Unmoored Ego
1 Anger of the Gods
3 Collective Brutality
1 Damnation
2 Disdainful Stroke
1 Fulminator Mage
2 Negate
2 Surgical Extraction
The ultimatum can be traded for a glimmer of genius or another bolas, but I do want it to be a draw spell or haymaker effect and prefer it to not be a permanent, especially not search for azcanta as that card is under heavy assault right now. Most cards that could fit into this spot are going to be bad against combo by default, so I'd like one that has the highest upside and so far ultimatum has been fine meeting those requirements.
The hand disruption package has been phenomenal between clique and erasure. Between that and the permission it has made the combo decks quite easily managed in the first game when I don't just 'get got' on turn three. Postboard it has been great with Ego as a trump card in many different matches. Even though it can be too slow against tron on the draw, if they don't have it assembled on board by three the game just ends and I'm ok with that.
Still zero cantrips in the deck and I haven't missed them. The surveil from erasure fulfills the role of making sure you have lands coming when you need them and business when you don't quite well. The fact that they can take a CoCo, Jace, or a Baral has been incredibly important and often game defining. That's not to mention that they aren't blank cards on turn twenty, they're not great but they still do something while IoK or thoughtseize are actually dead cards.
I'd say that this is most likely a product of the format as a whole coalescing into a few very narrow archetypes and heavily pushing out every other deck. Two graveyard aggro decks, two control (not including grixis), two disruptive aggro, two spell combo, and then there's always tron. And it just so happens that two of them we crush, one is slightly good for us, and the other two just curb stomp us. Everything else in the format just instantly rolls over dead against at least half of those decks. This means that our SB can be very focused and we can mostly ignore everything else that can show up in an open field.
Welcome to the Grixis Cabal! Best advice I can give you to get better in modern in general is to lose. A lot. And you're already starting on that so good job, hehe! Seriously, it just takes time to get the experience required to know what is important and when. It's the same as control in standard except you have a lot more decks, threats, and answers to consider. Even though Corey's videos are very dated at this point, they're still a good resource for somebody new to the deck to learn some of the unique play patterns we have available to us.
Your deck list is mostly fine, albeit a touch heavy on the discard. The biggest suggestion that I'll insist on is to cut the electrolyzes for almost anything else. You get really choked at three mana between them Kommand and snaps which makes it too difficult to deploy your spells effectively. I'd recommend some tasigur's and scours and perhaps an extra land. I've never liked 3x Field with only 24 total lands personally. I don't know if you have any budget or card availability concerns, but I'd like to see something like this to start with:
-1 Bolas
-4 Electrolyze
-1 IoK
-1 Seize
+2 tasigur
+3 thought scour
+1 fatal push
+1 darkslick shores
And tron is indeed The Enemy.
EDIT: I'm going to just assume that you and I have simply had wildly different experience with the variance of the game. Perhaps your opponents ran exceptionally well or mine especially bad. When spirits has the right disruption at the right time with a CoCo to top it off the deck looks unebatable, but that does need a lot to go right. All I can say for certain is that I've never had a problem when I focus on not running face first into their disruption in the opening turns.
Against any cavern/vial deck I cut all of my permission or at the very least I cut my cryptics. They're the type of aggro deck that wants you to have a glut of spot removal rather than sweepers with the main problem being that Kommand isn't a reliable doom blade. You want to approach the spirits match the same way you would traditional affinity and burn. That is to say don't get fancy and don't try to eek out that extra value, just cast your spells. You want to dump you hand as fast as they dump theirs and respect CoCo as long as you can. If you're able to stop the first CoCo your natural card advantage will get you ahead. If you're on discard prioritize casting it over removal to pull coco from their hand because that and GoST are the only good cards in their deck. Thought Erasure is going to be a big help against them when it comes out to let you take their two good cards with value added and not hurting you.
I agree that you do want dispel in your deck post board specifically for company and I'd bring in all the copies I have. Knot is fine on the play, but still less than ideal because of cavern/vial making it hard to find a live target. This is also another match up where Bolas is sweet because he is going to be bigger than everything they have, gets another card out of their hand and being able to cast him with a bolt for a potential queller is very easy to engineer.
No I don't have it posted somewhere else online. As much as I'd like to, I don't write for any major sites. If you're interested I can PM it to you, pretty sure there's isn't a practical size limit on PM's.
A better way to test one card specifically is to put it right on top of your deck after you shuffle up for a game. You'll always have it right when you want it and that will tell you right quick whether or not it's as good as you think it is. You learn if it's effective right away or if you find yourself having to craft a game plan around it. Then you can play a normal game and on turn seven or so you put it into your hand rather than drawing a random card to see how well it plays in the mid to late game.
Granted this isn't "natural" testing, but that's not the point. If you are only interested in testing exactly one card in exactly one match up then this is the best way to find out a cards worth in game without having to play out hundreds of matches.
.
(The name Sultai really BUGs me)
It's been a long, long time since black blue and green were in the same deck and even longer still since they were in a competitive deck. With the rotation and printing of Assassin's Trophy that seems to have changed. This will be my opening salvo at attempting to find the best control deck for the format. With trophy making things difficult for the traditional UW builds, sultai is my pick for best control deck moving forward and beginning with the best removal spells available seems like a great starting point to build.
Why Sultai?
Assassin's Trophy. That's the reason. Glad we had this conversation.
Ok. Why not UW, Jeskai, or Grixis?
Assassin's Trophy. Yes that is the entire reason to avoid other color combinations and dive in head first with the bugs. Both because we can play it and because we aren't soft to it. We aren't reliant on Ixalan's Binding to deal with walkers (trophy gets them right back) or enchantments like Seal Away to answer creatures and our finishers are spells and hexproof threats. Going BUG gives you the best removal spells in trophy and contempt, you get the best finisher and mirror breaker combo with carnage tyrant all wrapped up in a sweet inevitability engine with gaea's blessing and The Mirari Conjecture.
One less obvious, but especially important reason to go with sultai is the manabase and a clean mana base is facilitated by, you guessed it, the trophy. Having access to "BG - Kill A Thing" means we don't need to run field of ruin to handle utility lands like azcanta or the flip side of Legion's Landing. That combined with two immediately supported guilds gives us all the duals we need. Furthermore we have a reusable draw engine from gaea's blessing which means we don't have to run a copious number of arch of orazca to help keep the cards flowing for when our recursive draw elements get turned into basic lands. We end up not needing a single colorless land and the ability to run a good amount of basics to take advantage of any opposing trophies and to easily cast our own.
As we learned in the previous format, UW control struggled against decks that started with 4xVraska's Contempt or were aggressive enough to clear Teferi easily. Not relying on a walker that gives us a completely random card off the top before dying gives us a leg up on decks who plan to employ this strategy. With a pile of divination effects, better live top decks, and a draw engine that always gives us a good spell makes for a clear advantage.
We do give up the purity of Teferi as a win condition and lack a hard sweeper like cleansing nova, but we are well set up to play the point and click removal game. Should tokens become a thing to make the infinite kill spell plan difficult, we do have Ritual of Soot available to cleanly answer that strategy. Simply put, BUG checks all the boxes you want checked with a control deck. Power. Versatility. Clean answers to literally everything and absolute inevitability.
Let's start with a pair initial deck lists.
Sample List 1
3 Dead Weight
3 Vraska's Contempt
2 Cast Down
4 Assassin's Trophy
2 Ritual of Soot
Durdles
4 Chemister's Insight
2 Notion Rain
2 Search for Azcanta
2 Gaea's Blessing
Interaction
4 Thought Erasure
2 Essence Scatter
4 Sinister Sabotage
1 Carnage Tyrant
Manabase
4 Drowned Catacomb
1 Forest
4 Hinterland Harbor
2 Island
1 Memorial to Genius
4 Overgrown Tomb
2 Swamp
4 Watery Grave
3 Woodland Cemetery
1 Ritual of Soot
2 Moment of Craving
1 Nezahal, Primal Tide
2 Disinformation Campaign
2 Vona's Hunger
4 Negate
3 Pelakka Wurm
Sample List 2
2 Vona's Hunger
3 Vraska's Contempt
2 Cast Down
4 Assassin's Trophy
2 Ritual of Soot
Durdles
4 Secrets of the Golden City
3 The Mirari Conjecture
2 Notion Rain
2 Gaea's Blessing
Interaction
4 Thought Erasure
2 Essence Scatter
4 Sinister Sabotage
1 Carnage Tyrant
Manabase
4 Drowned Catacomb
1 Forest
4 Hinterland Harbor
3 Island
1 Memorial to Genius
4 Overgrown Tomb
1 Swamp
4 Watery Grave
3 Woodland Cemetery
1 Cast Down
1 Ritual of Soot
2 Moment of Craving
1 Nezahal, Primal Tide
4 Thief of Sanity
4 Negate
2 Pelakka Wurm
As you can see we have answers to all the major players of the format. Seven ways to eat a troublesome walker, six counterspells, and a play set of trophy lets us eat annoying artifacts or enchantments. Ritual of Soot to answer super go-wide plans, Vona's Hunger for hexproof threats, and thought erasure to answer anything else before it comes down. We are able to stop something in hand, on the stack, or on the battlefield. We are not relying on Azcanta or walkers as hard as previous control decks which makes Assassin's Trophy much less effective against us if Teferi was our primary source of card advantage. With The Mirari Conjecture plus Gaea's Blessing engine, we are also well equipped to use the extra mana that we could get from the trophy as well and never losing access to our long term advantage.
The lack of Search for Azcanta might put off some players, but it is a way for us to reduce the effectiveness of trophy as much as possible. All of our draw engines happen immediately with our divination effects or give us value before being transformed into a basic island. Relying on something to stick around on the battlefield in a world of trophies and contempts is a rather dubious plan. Focusing on spell based card advantage is the best way to ensure that you're never cut off from maintaining a material advantage.
Our primary way to actually end the game is simply decking them with their draw step while we sit around reshuffling answers with gaea's blessing indefinitely. The first blessing puts back three counters or kill spells and the second blessing gets back two draw spells and the first blessing and we can repeat this until the end of the game. While not as clean as doing the same thing with a teferi emblem hanging around, it does the trick just as well. The sample list includes the single carnage tyrant as a concession to our opponents not giving us the concession and will kill through anything quite fast. It also allows us to win game one against any deck playing Nexus of Fate as that card's mere existence prevents the use of decking as the sole win condition.
The overarching game plan of the deck past the traditional control strategy is to eventually recycle our entire deck. Gaea's blessing ensures that the top of our deck is going to be more live than our opponent's and prevents us from not only running out of cards in our library, but also prevents us from running out of the right answers. If we have to spend our edicts early to stay alive we can still find them again and again if hexproof threats start rolling off the top. Because of this infinite recursion aspect the only things that we are truly afraid of are dedicated hate for our blessing engine like Unmoored Ego and banefire.
With Banefire being in the format it may be correct to run Pelakka Wurm as the dedicated win condition. The wurm gains a huge amount of life when it enters and some extra value on the way out. The only real downside of this swap is that a hard exile effect like contempt sends us to the dedicated mill plan. One potential consideration is going down to only one copy of blessing as you can still recur it indefinitely with the mirari conjecture which gives you an extra main deck spot for another answer or hard win con. Only time will tell which is correct.
Thoughts on Removal
Our removal suite is going to be changing from week to week, which is typical in standard control decks. The only spot removal spells that will always be in the deck are the contempts and trophies. After that we will have to decide if we want to lean towards hard removal like Cast Down and Vona's Hunger to fight green stompy and their hexproof threats. After that is the red aggro decks where we'll want to shy away from edicts and focus more on Ritual of Soot and moment of craving.
Should control variants become equally as popular as the midrange and control decks then we may want to cut our additional removal entirely. Without gear hulks in the format, essence scatter loses all of its value against control so this will be an extremely delicate balance. Because of all of this, there really is no point in suggesting a "this is what you should do" set up for spot removal outside of the two base inclusions with the caveat that we want something in addition to assassin's trophy for early game kill spells.
Card Advantage Options
There are no shortage of great options to get ahead on raw card count in standard and choosing the best one depends on several factors. First of all is how much red aggro are you expecting to face? How often will you find yourself in a control mirror? These questions must be answered before you select your draw spells. Here are a few suggestions of which spell might fit best in a particular meta.
Secrets of the golden city - Fine early and great later on makes this a solid middle of the road choice. The double blue cost may be a bit tense at times, but a three mana ancestral in the midgame is still very powerful. This should most likely be your default choice until you have done more testing with your list against the predicted metagame.
District Guide - While not card draw in the traditional blue sense, this is still a 2-for-1 spell that might have some added value. It does turn on opposing removal, but what it does is help fix your mana and provide you with a nice speed bump that can harass any walkers you can't immediately clear. If you want to go this route you'll want to include some additional basic lands and perhaps a singleton guild gate to make the trigger worthwhile. Another minor point worth mentioning is that if you're running Secrets of the Golden City this is yet another permanent to help you get the city's blessing.
The guide also fills the role of allowing you to run a lower land count than you typically would to avoid flooding while helping you still hit all of your land drops. What it really comes down to is how useful is the body and is it better than simply running anticipate. I can easily see a situation where this is a 4-of value play that is mediocre game one, but is more useful post board when all of the removal comes out.
Notion Rain - A sweet call back to the very powerful Read the Bones with the surveil mechanic replacing scry. We know from past experiences that this is a very powerful card, but the life loss is certainly not free. If you expect a lot of opponents to be aggressively attacking your life total this is not a good choice, especially since you plan to cast it 4-8 times a game. However in a slower, midrange centric meta this is one of the best choices. Even though it doesn't get you a third card, the surveil 2 that's tacked on makes up for that and in some cases may end up being superior.
Finishers
In the bug colors there isn't a perfectly pure and clean win condition such as Approach from the previous format or looping Teferi with an emblem. Furthermore, relying on walkers to get the job done is a bit risky due to the Trophy + Contempt combo making them exceptionally hard to stick around long enough. Luckily there are a few other options for us that are a bit more likely to go the distance.
Carnage Tyrant - The implacable death lizard has been giving people fits for as long as it has been around. With the rotation of doomfall there will be much fewer decks that are running an answer outside of blocking. This is a much more reliable finisher than most options and checks all the right boxes. Hexproof, can't be countered and a way to punch through blockers in the form of trample. The seven power means it gets the game over in a hurry and can still trade with other control "mirror breakers" should the need arise.
Nezahal, Primal Tide - Another finisher that got better with the rotation, but this time it is from the lack of Disallow. Pitching several cards to save it only to have the return trigger stifled made the dino very sketchy, but now it is just one suitable option among many with a bit of card advantage tacked on to boot.
Sideboard Options
In our sideboards we do have a large amount of respectable directions to attack any given meta. First and foremost you have to decide which plan of attack you want for the control mirror because that will require the most dedicated slots. After that you must look closely at the aggro and midrange decks of the format and decide how many of what effects you will need. For ease of reading I will split up this section into Control Options and Aggro as there is very little overlap in utility.
Negate and Unwind - Extra counters are one of the few things you are certainly going to want and which combination depends on your strategy. The default tends to be a play set of negates before adding any extra counters in the side.
Thief of Sanity - A fantastic new addition to the "dimir specter" variants that threatens to get out of hand super fast. It's the Gonti that keeps on giving and is fantastic against any deck with little to no removal or blockers. Just like control mirrors. I'm a huge fan of this card and would recommend you give them a try first.
Mystic Archaeologist - The half way mark between the card advantage and aggro plan that beats down early and can draw a pile of cards later on. A slightly different version of Thief of Sanity, but still an option to consider if you're wanting a cheaper threat that might be a touch easier on the mana. The CMC is the main reason to choose this card over another as it is quite easy to slip in under permission even though it takes a long time to get value from it.
Nezahal, Primal Tide - An additional hard to answer threat with built in card advantage. As mentioned previously, the absence of a stifle effect really makes this card worth considering.
Duress - Thought Erasure in the main deck makes duress less of a home run, especially since it can't take the creature threats, but it still fulfills a certain role and the information gained is incredibly valuable.
Arguel's Blood Fast - Yes, this card is still in standard and will continue to give headaches to control players. This time though there is a cheap answer to it which means it is less of an instant win card. It is still going to be worth several cards if it resolves and if the card advantage plan is how you want to approach the mirror this is likely the best option.
Knight of Malice - If you want to go for the "Gotcha!" plan post-board then this is one of your better choices. The black-ish knight is at its best against the white based control decks of course, not just for the bonus power, but also to brick wall any tokens from History of Benalia that might come in.
Vine Mare - Another gotcha card for the control mirror. This one has the fun word "Hexproof" written on it which makes it almost impossible to be removed post-board. It being four mana does open it up to permission, but if you're heavy on the discard plan it can be quite easy to force through. Once you get to untap with it the game is going to end in very short order as you are able to counter the very few things they'll have to remove your threat.
Arch of Orazca - An extra land in a control mirror is always a good thing and one that draws cards is even better. With a number of playable answers to utility lands this might not be a great option if drawing cards is your primary motivation, but the extra land to draw into makes this a worthy consideration.
The Eldest Reborn - Should you want another option for a grindy late game card with some additional utility this has always been "fine." Never amazing, but always acceptable. It's another edict effect for vine mare or dinosaurs and can potentially steal a walker to win with. All around solid without being amazing.
Aggro
Ritual of Soot - Even though The Chainwhirler is keeping token decks from being played, some number are still fine. With goblins being a semi-supported tribe and boros aggro looking to be quite good, having access to an effect that can clear the board is great to have in your list. Depending on the typical sizing of the aggro decks you can easily end up wanting a full set or just one. It is worth pointing out that golden demise is another possible option for a sweeper slot if costing one mana less ends up being important.
Moment of craving - If burn heavy, hyper-aggro decks are prominent then this will be your best card against them. This one requires the most context to be correct so any number from zero to four could end up being right on a given weekend.
Dead Weight - A sorcery speed disfigure isn't anything to be especially excited over, but this is our only option for turn one removal. The more popular Llanowar Elves are the more that you'll want these. Pay close attention to the general sizing of creatures as this could easily make its way into the main deck.
Cast down - For the bigger green decks where the ramp from Trophy can be a real liability this is your best spot removal spell and will always be good to have a couple copies around. There will always be a stray legend hanging around like Kari Zev or Tajic that you can't tag with this, so keep that in mind when deciding on your final count.
Pelakka Wurm - Even though this is quite the odd inclusion, it acts as a slightly better finisher against the aggro decks because of the life gain attached to it. The main reason to want this over a dinosaur is to get yourself out of Banefire range. If the unstoppable fireball is popular you can easily want more threats that gain you life to keep your head above water and not get got. Not to mention the fact that gaining seven life tends to win the game on its own as was shown with the first casting of Approach of the Second Sun. Depending on the metagame you expect, some number of these could even be considered for main deck play if the durability of carnage tyrant isn't necessary.
As you can see there are answers to everything that we could be facing down. From token swarms to walkers to hexproof threats, everything can be neatly answered with a single card. With a properly constructed 75, we could easily end up being favored against anything we want to be. It all comes down to having the correct configuration of removal and draw spells which won't be too difficult. Let's get the discussion started by posting our initial testing experiences and deck lists.
EDIT: Added a second, more "expected" looking deck list to the start.
The card disadvantage is a complete nonissue. When you side the card in you don't care about card advantage, you are preventing your opponent from winning the game and that is worth far more than a single card as evidence by us trying to field+surgical tron. The speed is also a nonissue because either we have no options before turn three or this is just a "medium-fine" option that will buy us several turns at minimum to address the real problem.
Again this is a super condensed version of my thoughts on the card, but I am very insistent that we all put our focus on working with the card and seeing if there is anything else we can do to build a game plan around it post board against combo decks and strategies that we are unfavored against.
I like that Ego can still act as grave hate, even if you only get 3/4 bloodghasts or amalgams, the ones that can hang around are VERY manageable. Not to mention that we can always snap Ego if we really want to.
Keranos is definitely not too slow against mardu. We have enough business to manage the game until he can come down and if he does get hit with a thoughtseize, he does count as a creature in the yard so we can just Kommand him right back. Don't worry about activating him into a proper creature, it's just an unstoppable value engine that only dies to celestial purge which I doubt they are going to run.
Far from a main deck inclusion obviously, but this does make a lot of games a lot easier to win. With a pile of discard and permission this could easily end up patching the leaks we have against the non-creature based combo decks. I've mentioned before that fair decks are very favorable for us and this just might solve our problems with some combo decks. Here's a deck I'm tinkering with considering all of the spoilers and what I think the meta might look like.
2 Nicol Bolas, the Ravager
4 Snapcaster Mage
2 Tasigur, the Golden Fang
2 Vendilion Clique
Removal
1 Fatal Push
3 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Dreadbore
2 Terminate
Interaciton
1 Countersquall
3 Cryptic Command
2 Logic Knot
4 Thought Erasure
4 Ancestral Vision
Mana
1 Blood Crypt
1 Darkslick Shores
3 Field of Ruin
3 Island
1 Mountain
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
2 Spirebluff Canal
2 Steam Vents
2 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
2 Anger of the Gods
2 Collective Brutality
1 Countersquall
1 Damnation
2 Disdainful Stroke
1 Dispel
1 Fulminator Mage
4 Unmoored Ego
1 Surgical Extraction
EDIT: BAH! Darkvoidman got there first!