Looking at the card pool available (nowhere near ths same selection available as in the original list), and though I might be loathe to say it, delver might be a good fit for what you're aiming for, maybe something like this:
That's just a rough draft off the top of my head - Maybe put more stuff like Dismember and the like in that clear the way and work with both delver and the dryad. Green sun can act as dryads and huntmasters 5-6, and while they don't pump dryad, they do flip delver.
Wow. That is an underwhelming pack. To me, it essentially comes down to Death's Caress, Divination, Silverclaw Griffin, and Fires of Undeath. There's not much else in the pack I'd be excited about, let alone actively want in my deck. I think I'm going with fires on this one, although I could easily see myself taking the griffin or divinatino for signaling purposes. Removal that flashes back is great.
Going through the ratings, i disagree in a few salient points:
Nibilis of the Urn(***): Doesn't really remove threats, only taps down a blocker on attacking - they can still untap and crack back on their turn. It's still a flier for 2 with a useful ability for racing.
Counterlash(**): It's really only good if you're holding mana up for it instead of casting something else, otherwise it's just an overcosted counterspell. extremely conditional to be good. I'd generally prefer Bones to Ash over this. As an additional note, it only lets you bypass mana costs. Any additional costs (exiling from your gy, saccing creatures, etc) still have to be paid.
Saving grasp (**): it has potential, but the 'rescue' creatures, from my experience, were really only good because they gave you a body in exchange for the tempo hit. It does work well with 187 abilities, but seems like unless you have a number of tower geists or undying creatures, it'll be underwhelming.
Gravepurge(**): functional reprint of footbottom feast, which didn't see any play, really. I expect a repeat performance.
Reap the Seagraf (***): it's a grey ogre at the worst, but it's still a relevant-sized creature and 2 bodies for one card. The fact that it compares unfavorably to moan of the unhallowed isn't really relevant - it hits the curve differently, and is also a common in a small set, whereas moan is an uncommon in a large set.
Markov Blademaster (***) Yes, it is great if it manages to connect, even once, but that first attack, it's very vulnerable. It just trades with a lot of 1-3 drops, and loses to the number of 2/3's in the format now. You really need a number of good equipment, wild hunger, pyreheart wolf, crossroads vampire, or nightbird's clutches to make it really good. Like a lot of red creatures in the format, not amazing unless things fall into place.
Clinging Vines (**): Yes, it's a blowout at the last minute, but a lot of the time it's just a 3-mana fog.
Ghoultree(****): Unless you're in UG, this is going to take a long time to be castable, as people are going to be avoiding allowing morbid triggers and such in the format. Still, even as a 6-drop, its still really good, and very splashable.
Drogskol Reaver (*****): the 7 mana is kind of intimidating, but sealed is somewhat more forgiving on that face. It's pretty unbeatable if they don't kill it. going up 6 life and drawing 2 cards a turn(or 3 life and 1 card if they have a chumper) is overwhelming advantage, in terms of both tempo and card advantage.
Chalice of life (*): Unless you're running gnaw to the bone or a lot of lifelink creatures, this will almost never flip. To conditional to be considered all that playable.
Helvault (*): too slow, too much of a chance to bite you in the butt, especially when crushing vines is in the format.
The problem is, as nice as the stalker-plus-enchantments or sword-stalker interaction is, stalker really doesn't do enough by itself to warrant inclusion. It's a 20 turn clock, whch does not block well at all, and doesn't provide any card advantage by itself. It's also a completely soul-crushing late game draw. I think that the stalker is a bit of a red herring to be following at this point, and is probably actually not that playable in this kind of deck.
I can also see Divine Reckoning seeing play in this deck instead of Day of Judgment. Sure they get to keep their best guy (best hope it's not a Titan), but you get to keep your unblockable, hexproof clock, and I can bet you're the one winning that race. Plus with Reckoning you don't have to hope to draw a 2nd copy, just flash the 1st one back.
No. Just no. You actually point out the reason why not (titans). Day was used last season as a means to kill titans, which this deck couldn't effectively do. making it so that the card specifically can't answer the one thing that it needs to is a terrible idea.
You won't be winning the race against a grave titan, inferno titan, or even a hero of bladehold. Obviously, titans from UB and Pod are going to be a problem, and leaving pod with even one creature will most likely allow them to recover from the 'wrath' fairly quickly.
You also don't have to worry about flashback on the reckoning if you simply have snapcaster in the deck, anyway. It may take an extra card, but it costs 1 less to do anyway, and is often more likely to allow them to overextend into the flashback.
I'd go with the Looter - The card quality advantage in any core set format is invaluable, plus it signals pretty hard blue - with only negate and the mediocre thief in blue in the pack, you should be able to set up some good signals going and be rewarded later.
What would be out win con if we take out both Gideon and Hawks? Colonnade and SFM with swords? Seems slow... am I missing something?
Primarily, SFM with sword, or, if you're running it, nexus. Running nexus gives an extremely fast clock against them, just 4 attacks with a sword (3 if you run mortapod).
SoFF is amazing in this MU. You make them start discarding the spells that matter (titans/traps), and you should have either 9 or 10 counters to their business spell, depending on the number of flashfreeze in your board. Eventually, if you don't get a quick enough clock, they just go into topdeck mode, you land a Jace, and at that point you've pretty much won. SoBM, while it can randomly win games by milling enough mountains to stop them from going off, its almost a coin flip as to whether or not you stop them in time for them to actually try to go off.
Torpor orb- Read as TURN OFF CAW-BLADE/TITANS. Either this will be a 10 dollar rare, or Caw blade stops playing stoneforge mystic. Which do you think is more likely?
sorry to be the one who brings this argument into this thread, but torpor orb is a terrible card -It doesn't progress your board state at all, you never want to see it in multiples, but you want to always get it out on turn 2 (to stop stoneforge/hawk shenanigans), and against titans, where there's more leniency regarding the timing, you essentially played stifle against them. they still get the 6/6 plus attacking triggers, so you have to deal with them anyway. The worst part is, you can never really keep a hand with multiples - in doing that, you have to put them on being bad enough to waste removal on it, otherwise you make all the others into blank cards by having it in play unless you're doing some janky metalcraft stuff. If i'm playing caw-blade and i know they're siding in 4 of these, i'm pretty happy, because they've given themselves three blank cards (4 if they don't get it out turn 2/3). the only thing this is a decent answer to is the exarch-splinter twin combo.
my pics for not-obvious playables in NPH: Spellskite - excellent sb material, answers splinter twin combo, tezzeret's -1, and, quite literally, eh doesn't afraid of anything Porcelain Legionnare -will be played in tempered steel decks, would eb a part of ww if the knights theme doesn't underrate it. Fresh Meat - elves and WG quest got better against caw-blade Mutagenic growth- if the infectpumppumppump deck was ever viable, this is what might make it tier-able. glistener elf - 1drop for that same infectpumppumppump deck noxious revival - not only is this an interesting card to keep pressure up (returning a titan or other creature back to the top of your library after they answer it the first time), but you can possibly screw them out of a late-game answer by putting a land or other useless card on top of their library when they need a certain answer. Jin-gitaxis, core augur - there is a standard 'dredge' deck being bandied about. if a decent zombify variant comes out in m12, this might become a really viable deck, and this would be the centerpiece. blade splicer - 4 power for 3 mana is nothing to sneeze at, could be playable in cawblade, as it creates 2 sword carriers due respect - could act as a proto-time walk early turns by an aggressive enough deck. cantrips, too, which makes things more interesting.
Opponent: Cast Splinter Twin enchanting Deceiver Exarch
Opponent: Tap Exarch, make a copy.
Opponent: Copy targets Exarch to untap
You: In response, play Act of Aggression, targeting the original Exarch.
You: Act resolves, getting a tapped Exarch
Opponent: Trigger resolves, untapping Exarch.
Assuming your opponent does nothing for the rest of the turn...
Act of Aggression doesn't give the creature back until the cleanup step, so...
You: During the End Phase, make 10,000,000 Deceiver Exarch tokens, making sure to not untap the Deceiver Exarch with the last token.
You: Cleanup step, give back a tapped Exarch
You don't neccesarily have to wait until he targets the exarch with the token's ability - the act untaps it anyway. plus the untap ability would fizzle upon resolution, as the untap ability only works on permanents the ability's controller controls. just be careful never to do it with the "t: copy ~" on the stack, because then they will be able to tap your exarch down after the stack finishes resolving, so you can't create tokens on the end step, and you've just delayed their combo by a turn.
I played a 3/3 split between tec edge and inkmoth at FNM this week - I was always happy to see it (they won me something like 4 games out of 5 rounds), and can't reccomend going down to less than 2 main. I want to try to run 4, but going down to 2 tec edge seems bad, and i don't want to run 28 land. I'm thinking of dropping my 4th glacial fortress for the 4th inkmoth, although i don't want to stretch my mana too far.
Beast Within is not what everyone is making it out to be. The only deck which could benefit from it is Valakut and even then Valakut doesn't seem like a deck where you want to be trading your turn to slow them down. I'd personally rather be casting Cultivate or something similar that puts me a step towards the end of the game.
this is a relevant point. valakut is a deck that cannot afford to water itself down much. one reason that it has such a bad record against caw-blade is that in order to fight it, it has to dilute its ramping with cards like acidic slime and tumble magnet, which just gives cawblade more time to disrupt valakut. it's a lose-lose proposition for valakut to run more disruption spells over the ramp it needs to have.
Despise: I'm honestly not sure if this is better than Inquisition of Kozilek in the current meta. Inquisiton still hits all the important creatures but can still rip a sword after they've fetched it. That said, this thing does rip Planeswalkers and Mystics before they make an impact, which is important.
the thing is, in the cawblade mirror, the swords are overrated - unless one player can get a real early tempo advantage off of the swords, getting hit with a sword once or twice is not backbreaking. What happens with the matchup is that it generally devolves into who can stick either gideon or jace longer - another reason why mortapod is so good is that it can get a couple of extra points of damage against jaces, which can turn the jace war well in one player's favor. despise does the most important thing in either of these matchups - it can pull the squadron hawk from their hand, which makes your swords better against them, and it can pull a gideon or jace from their hand, forcing them to either draw into another planeswalker, or to try and get the rare huge CA in the early game neccesary for the deck to win the mirror without planeswalkers. This card will most likely allow esper blade to fulfill the "better in the mirror" matchup that it originally touted, but then failed to follow through on.
honestly the best change that could be made to allow us to block a SoWP will probably be to do what a lot of decks are moving towards - running inkmoth nexus as a 4-of. It gives a chump blocker and can act as a sword carrier thats also a viable win condition. Into the roil also seems like it could be a really good answer, as bouncing any of the swords always seems to work well.
Sphinx seems really bad as an answer to sword of war and peace - if they get a tumble magnet, oust, or jace removing it as a blocker, the advantage of drawing two cards actually seems bad, as it gives them an extra 2 damage off of the sword, and you are probably tapping out to get it out in the first place, so you are left open to many possible answers they might have. Guard Gomazoa seems like a stronger answer to sworded creatures than the sphinx.
4 Sulfur Falls
1 Mountain
3 forests
8 Island
2 Evolving Wilds
4 Quirion Dryad
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Huntmaster of the Fells
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Ponder
4 Vapor Snag
4 Mana Leak
4 Gut Shot
2 Green Sun's Zenith
That's just a rough draft off the top of my head - Maybe put more stuff like Dismember and the like in that clear the way and work with both delver and the dryad. Green sun can act as dryads and huntmasters 5-6, and while they don't pump dryad, they do flip delver.
Nibilis of the Urn(***): Doesn't really remove threats, only taps down a blocker on attacking - they can still untap and crack back on their turn. It's still a flier for 2 with a useful ability for racing.
Counterlash(**): It's really only good if you're holding mana up for it instead of casting something else, otherwise it's just an overcosted counterspell. extremely conditional to be good. I'd generally prefer Bones to Ash over this. As an additional note, it only lets you bypass mana costs. Any additional costs (exiling from your gy, saccing creatures, etc) still have to be paid.
Saving grasp (**): it has potential, but the 'rescue' creatures, from my experience, were really only good because they gave you a body in exchange for the tempo hit. It does work well with 187 abilities, but seems like unless you have a number of tower geists or undying creatures, it'll be underwhelming.
Gravepurge(**): functional reprint of footbottom feast, which didn't see any play, really. I expect a repeat performance.
Reap the Seagraf (***): it's a grey ogre at the worst, but it's still a relevant-sized creature and 2 bodies for one card. The fact that it compares unfavorably to moan of the unhallowed isn't really relevant - it hits the curve differently, and is also a common in a small set, whereas moan is an uncommon in a large set.
Markov Blademaster (***) Yes, it is great if it manages to connect, even once, but that first attack, it's very vulnerable. It just trades with a lot of 1-3 drops, and loses to the number of 2/3's in the format now. You really need a number of good equipment, wild hunger, pyreheart wolf, crossroads vampire, or nightbird's clutches to make it really good. Like a lot of red creatures in the format, not amazing unless things fall into place.
Clinging Vines (**): Yes, it's a blowout at the last minute, but a lot of the time it's just a 3-mana fog.
Ghoultree(****): Unless you're in UG, this is going to take a long time to be castable, as people are going to be avoiding allowing morbid triggers and such in the format. Still, even as a 6-drop, its still really good, and very splashable.
Drogskol Reaver (*****): the 7 mana is kind of intimidating, but sealed is somewhat more forgiving on that face. It's pretty unbeatable if they don't kill it. going up 6 life and drawing 2 cards a turn(or 3 life and 1 card if they have a chumper) is overwhelming advantage, in terms of both tempo and card advantage.
Chalice of life (*): Unless you're running gnaw to the bone or a lot of lifelink creatures, this will almost never flip. To conditional to be considered all that playable.
Helvault (*): too slow, too much of a chance to bite you in the butt, especially when crushing vines is in the format.
8 forest
1 Deranged Assistant
1 Ludevic's Test Subject
1 Mayor of Avabruck
2 lantern spirit
2 villagers of estwald
1 orchard spirit
1 civilized scholar
1 stitched drake
1 splinterfright
1 festerhide boar
1 makeshift mauler
1 grizzled outcasts
1 sturmgeist
2 claustrophobia
1 caravan vigil
1 moonmist
1 travel preparations
1 spectral flight
1 think twice
1 delver of secrets
1 fortress crab
1 kindercatch
1 full moon's rise
2 harvest pyre
1 brimstone volley
1 desparate ravings
1 village ironsmith
1 ancient grudge
1 bloodcrazed neonate
yeah, I know it's 41 cards, but I couldn't figure out what I wanted to cut. The sideboard is the relevant cards that I might have played.
I was really happy with this overall, but I still wonder if I should have splashed red for more removal and the ravings.
No. Just no. You actually point out the reason why not (titans). Day was used last season as a means to kill titans, which this deck couldn't effectively do. making it so that the card specifically can't answer the one thing that it needs to is a terrible idea.
You won't be winning the race against a grave titan, inferno titan, or even a hero of bladehold. Obviously, titans from UB and Pod are going to be a problem, and leaving pod with even one creature will most likely allow them to recover from the 'wrath' fairly quickly.
You also don't have to worry about flashback on the reckoning if you simply have snapcaster in the deck, anyway. It may take an extra card, but it costs 1 less to do anyway, and is often more likely to allow them to overextend into the flashback.
Primarily, SFM with sword, or, if you're running it, nexus. Running nexus gives an extremely fast clock against them, just 4 attacks with a sword (3 if you run mortapod).
SoFF is amazing in this MU. You make them start discarding the spells that matter (titans/traps), and you should have either 9 or 10 counters to their business spell, depending on the number of flashfreeze in your board. Eventually, if you don't get a quick enough clock, they just go into topdeck mode, you land a Jace, and at that point you've pretty much won. SoBM, while it can randomly win games by milling enough mountains to stop them from going off, its almost a coin flip as to whether or not you stop them in time for them to actually try to go off.
sorry to be the one who brings this argument into this thread, but torpor orb is a terrible card -It doesn't progress your board state at all, you never want to see it in multiples, but you want to always get it out on turn 2 (to stop stoneforge/hawk shenanigans), and against titans, where there's more leniency regarding the timing, you essentially played stifle against them. they still get the 6/6 plus attacking triggers, so you have to deal with them anyway. The worst part is, you can never really keep a hand with multiples - in doing that, you have to put them on being bad enough to waste removal on it, otherwise you make all the others into blank cards by having it in play unless you're doing some janky metalcraft stuff. If i'm playing caw-blade and i know they're siding in 4 of these, i'm pretty happy, because they've given themselves three blank cards (4 if they don't get it out turn 2/3). the only thing this is a decent answer to is the exarch-splinter twin combo.
my pics for not-obvious playables in NPH:
Spellskite - excellent sb material, answers splinter twin combo, tezzeret's -1, and, quite literally, eh doesn't afraid of anything
Porcelain Legionnare -will be played in tempered steel decks, would eb a part of ww if the knights theme doesn't underrate it.
Fresh Meat - elves and WG quest got better against caw-blade
Mutagenic growth- if the infectpumppumppump deck was ever viable, this is what might make it tier-able.
glistener elf - 1drop for that same infectpumppumppump deck
noxious revival - not only is this an interesting card to keep pressure up (returning a titan or other creature back to the top of your library after they answer it the first time), but you can possibly screw them out of a late-game answer by putting a land or other useless card on top of their library when they need a certain answer.
Jin-gitaxis, core augur - there is a standard 'dredge' deck being bandied about. if a decent zombify variant comes out in m12, this might become a really viable deck, and this would be the centerpiece.
blade splicer - 4 power for 3 mana is nothing to sneeze at, could be playable in cawblade, as it creates 2 sword carriers
due respect - could act as a proto-time walk early turns by an aggressive enough deck. cantrips, too, which makes things more interesting.
You need more consistency:
3 Island
4 preordain
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Topor Orb
Fixed!
You don't neccesarily have to wait until he targets the exarch with the token's ability - the act untaps it anyway. plus the untap ability would fizzle upon resolution, as the untap ability only works on permanents the ability's controller controls. just be careful never to do it with the "t: copy ~" on the stack, because then they will be able to tap your exarch down after the stack finishes resolving, so you can't create tokens on the end step, and you've just delayed their combo by a turn.
1 scalding tarn
1 marsh flats
4 celestial colonnade
4 seachrome coast
4 glacial fortress
3 plains
4 island
3 tectonic edge
3 inkmoth nexus
Creatures:10
4 stoneforge mystic
4 squadron hawk
2 emeria angel
1 Jace Beleren
1 elspeth Tirel
2 gideon jura
3 jace the mind sculptor
Sorceries: 6
4 preordain
2 Day of Judgment
Instants: 6
3 spell pierce
3 mana leak
artifacts: 5
1 Mortarpod
2 sword of feast and famine
2 tumble magnet
1 baneslayer angel
1 jace beleren
1 day of judgment
2 sun titan
3 oust
3 kor firewalker
4 flashfreeze
this is a relevant point. valakut is a deck that cannot afford to water itself down much. one reason that it has such a bad record against caw-blade is that in order to fight it, it has to dilute its ramping with cards like acidic slime and tumble magnet, which just gives cawblade more time to disrupt valakut. it's a lose-lose proposition for valakut to run more disruption spells over the ramp it needs to have.
the thing is, in the cawblade mirror, the swords are overrated - unless one player can get a real early tempo advantage off of the swords, getting hit with a sword once or twice is not backbreaking. What happens with the matchup is that it generally devolves into who can stick either gideon or jace longer - another reason why mortapod is so good is that it can get a couple of extra points of damage against jaces, which can turn the jace war well in one player's favor. despise does the most important thing in either of these matchups - it can pull the squadron hawk from their hand, which makes your swords better against them, and it can pull a gideon or jace from their hand, forcing them to either draw into another planeswalker, or to try and get the rare huge CA in the early game neccesary for the deck to win the mirror without planeswalkers. This card will most likely allow esper blade to fulfill the "better in the mirror" matchup that it originally touted, but then failed to follow through on.
Sphinx seems really bad as an answer to sword of war and peace - if they get a tumble magnet, oust, or jace removing it as a blocker, the advantage of drawing two cards actually seems bad, as it gives them an extra 2 damage off of the sword, and you are probably tapping out to get it out in the first place, so you are left open to many possible answers they might have. Guard Gomazoa seems like a stronger answer to sworded creatures than the sphinx.