My thinking with the Crime was rationalizing how much I like having one opening hand. So shoving my bias aside I'll cut one of them out, and go with the 4th Smallpox and 4th Knight, dropping the Knight if I pick up a Haakon.
I don't think it's unreasonable to want the 4th Crime. If you look at my sideboarding notes, I had wanted to bring the 4th in in all of the combo matchups, and I was really only taking it out against Affinity (again, as I said in my big post's edit, ignore Junk as I found Crime to be good against them). I think the thing with Crime is that it's only really good with Loam. Yes, sometimes you'll have an extra land and be able to just strip away the last 2 cards in their hand, or something like that, but more often than not, you're waiting until you find a Loam to really go to town on their hand. That to me is what makes it a 3-of. I don't really need it in my opening hand, but ideally, I'd like to find one after dredging for a few turns.
Maybe the 4th Raven's Crime is too much, as I usually end up playing them from the graveyard. The 4th Lingering Souls, Smallpox or Knight of the Reliquary might be better. I usually play the Lingerings, but Knobobo explains that Smallpox might be better. I like the forth knight if you want to be agressive in some games, as playing it as a 4/4+ on turn 3 is pretty harsh for some decks.
Yeah, I agree with that. I like 3 Crimes, which if I understand correctly, gives you two slots, because you're trying to figure out what to play if you don't have a third Haakon? Like kipe85 said, I'd pick two between Smallpox, Knight, and Souls, and I think that order is my order of preference. If you expect a lot of combo, Souls are pretty worthless, where as Knight helps a lot against stuff like Dredge/Pyro Ascension, because you can threaten to Bojuka Bog at instant speed, and it's also a clock, which you need to have. Souls can be considered a clock, but it's typically too slow, unless you completely grind down their resources and have time to actually cast and then kill with them.
I'm not entirely sure how the Junk matchup will be, and I don't know entirely what the lists will look like. I imagine they will be moving back towards Dark Confidant/Lingering Souls/Liliana of the Veil, and hopefully once the GGT hype dies down, they will be looking to trim Scavenging Oozes to make room for it all.
Last night I was chilling with my playtest group and one of my friends had been playing pod, so obviously he needed a new deck. We decided to build Junk midrange for him to try (and also to have to test against), and we played about 7-10 games. For reference, here's the list we used:
We just built that list as-is to use as a starting point, and will be tweaking it in the near future. The games we played were all mainboarded, but I think sideboard favors us more than them (at least with that list), as they only have some Grafdigger's Cages. Even though they have white, they won't be playing Rest in Peace because they have Goyf, so whether they're running Cage/Relic/Crypt, we know those are all a tier below RIP in terms of effectiveness against us, and are all basically speed bumps that are mostly insignificant. Them spending a card on that early means they have less to actually threaten our life total with, and we can just casually draw into a Decay once we've stabilized.
As for how the games went, I think I won about 75% of them, and most of the games weren't even close. The games he won were pretty much all close and could have potentially been turned around. Things of note off the top of my head:
1) Obviously, they're playing maindeck Ooze, and while it can be very good against us, I honestly felt like that it wasn't THAT bad, because I think most of the rest of that deck matches up so poorly against us. There were a couple of games where he had an Ooze in play that I couldn't remove, and I just dredged faster than he could remove stuff and overpowered him with Knights.
2) Siege Rhino was involved in every game I lost. The combination of the initial -3 life, and then generally trampling over a Stinkweed Imp for another few points, or just having no answer at all was a problem. I think we all expect that. The only way to really compete with this, was again, to overpower it with Knight.
3) Related to the Siege Rhino issue, and something to keep in mind, in general, when given the opportunity, I think you basically always want to trade your souls for theirs. Yes keeping souls to potentially chump Goyf/big Oozes is relevant, but I think it's more relevant to keep the board clear so our many edict effects are 100% live. This is our ideal way of dealing with a Rhino.
4) This has been relevant against other decks, obviously, but I don't think it's ever been expressly noted in this thread: sometimes you want to let them do their thing with Liliana for a while. Liliana is laughably bad against us so don't feel obligated to use a card to kill her unless you really feel you need to. For example, if I have only one Abrupt Decay in hand (and other cards to prevent me from discarding the Decay), and they play a Liliana, I'm not going to Decay it. I'm going to save the Decay for something that matters (which isn't much in this matchup) like Ooze or Bob. Liliana +1 helps us more than them, -2 will basically do nothing unless they play it after you play a KotR from hand, and even the ultimate isn't scary if you've already found a loam. I've quite frequently stablized everything else (opponent's creatures and hand) while letting them tick up Liliana each turn, and then only after everything else was taken care of, I played a Lingering Souls and started to attack her. Even last night, against my friend, he had a Liliana on 6, but NO other resources, and I only had 5 lands in play. I just Loamed some lands in my hand the turn before so that if he ulted, I'd have a green mana to make sure I could continue to Loam. It completely negates the ultimate.
5) This is a matchup where you need to be very aware of their manlands and your Tec Edges/Ghost Quarters. It is almost the design of GBx decks to grind you down with 1 for 1s, and then when all is said and done, you both have nothing, but they have manlands. This came up multiple games last night, and having the answer to their lands was crucial. Note that if you get a turn to activate with a knight, You'll almost always want to get your own Wildwood (great against their lands if they have no cards in hand), or a Tec edge. You don't want to miss an opportunity to get these, get something use, then have them draw a removal spell for the Knight next turn and kill you with lands.
6) Darkblast is so on the fence for me in this matchup. Best thing it can do is kill a Bob. Second best is kill an Ooze if they play it on turn 2 (which I think if they know the matchup, they should never ever do), third best is clear away their Lingering Souls. ...That's about all it does. I think if you have Maelstrom Pulses to bring in from the side, this is the first thing to go, especially because it's so much better at kill Souls, but remember it will kill your spirits as well! This actually brings me back to point 3, where if it comes to a decision to Maelstrom Pulse both of your spirits or not, I think it's good to do so to make your edicts better. Then again, if you have a Pulse, you can just Pulse their actual threat (Rhino, Ooze, etc), so I think it really depends on the situation: how many edicts do you have in hand, how many cards do they have, what other creatures are in play, etc.
7) On the topic of Malestrom Pulse, I think it's the best sideboard card in this matchup. Kills Rhino, kills Ooze, clears out spirits, and can kill their graveyard hate. It actually makes me wonder if Putrify is worth considering, specifically in the main, over some number of the Abrupt Decays. Months ago, one of the main tipping points for me in the old Decay/Pulse debate was that Decay was the best card against Twin, and Pulse was useless against it. That alone made me go 100% Decay in the main. Twin has been almost non-existant where I play, and depending on how much it comes back post-ban, I could see bringing some Pulse back into the main. However, I never considered Putrify, which is an entirely different option. Also good against Twin, but obviously doesn't hit some permanents we care about...though in game 1, I have to ask myself which permanents those would be... Most of the non-creature permanents in the main we actually care about happen to be Artifacts, anwyay, like Relic out of the Tron decks, for example. What can be Decayed but not Putrified in game 1 that we can about? Is it nothing?
Edit 8) One other thing I forgot to mention, which hasn't been reflected in the sideboarding notes at the bottom: My friend specifically noted how good Raven's Crime was in the matchup. Since the deck has so much removal, and basically just curves out, Raven's Crime was very useful for getting rid of the last 2-3 cards (mostly removal, sometimes a Rhino, or something), before starting to take over the game. In my original sideboarding thoughts, it was all theory, and I thought maybe I'd want to side out Crimes. Not anymore.
Part II: Current Decklist and Card Discussion
Ok, so, that's enough random thoughts about Junk. Let's keep this post going with what I promised a few nights ago, and let me talk a bit about my current list, and sideboard.
Ok, so, let's start with some stuff in the maindeck. Most notable:
1) I'm back to 2 Darkblasts (down from 3, before the bannings), and I'm down to 2 Nameless Inversion. For a while, I had the third Nameless in my sideboard, and I'd like the third back either in the main or side, but I've been doing ok with just the 2. I think the number of decks where we need this to win are small, and I haven't really felt the difference from 3 to 2.
2) Smallpox up to 4. This has been my favorite change. This will become more clear, I think after looking at how I determined the sideboard, but after doing so much work on the sideboard, I realized I wanted the 4th in the side. Then, as I was putting the sideboard together, I realized I would be siding it in in about 80%+ of the matchups, and almost never siding any out...this to me screamed that the 4th should be in the main. I've been playing with it for a bit now, and I can definitely feel it, and definitely approve. There have been many games where I Smallpox turns 2 and 3 back to back and the game is just over. So many decks fold to this card, it's ridiculous. When testing against Junk last night, Smallpox was taken to Inquisition/Thoughtseize 100% of the time, given the opportunity, even over Damnation.
3) Lingering Souls down to 3. I know I said "I would never play this deck without the 4th Souls", but I've secretly been doing it for a few weeks now. It started out because I wanted to try some other stuff, and it's the easiest thing to cut, and it just kinda never made it back in. Similar to Nameless, while it would be nice to have one more, I haven't really felt the 1 missing too much. There have definitely been games where I've been like "man, I could really use a Souls to buy some time", but those games are very few and far between. If I can find a way to put it back, I will, but for now, I'm ok with leaving it at 3.
4) Noxious Revival. I actually have nothing to say about this card for the time being. I just put it in last night to try it out after talking to my friend about it. The theory seems good, but I haven't actually played it yet, so I don't know. I think it's been suggested before and shot down, but after thinking about it more, my theory is that this could be like our version of Snapcaster Mage. There are SO many games I play, where I'm forced to stop dredging and I'm drawing to a single out (almost always Damnation or Decay). Being able to EoT put it on top and then draw it just seems too useful to pass up. There are also times when I'd love to hit a land drop, but don't want to spend 2 mana to dredge Loam and cast it. This can work in those situations also. This even has some small potential for graveyard "hate", like against unburial rites.
Typically, the main drawback to a card like this is that it's card disadvanatge. The card goes on your library, not into your hand, so you're spending a card for "nothing". But I think in our deck, this is a non-factor. We're not worried about card advantage...dredging gives us way more card advantage than any other deck. So in theory, this card seems like the real deal. I'm excited to actually cast it and see what it does for me, of anything. I'm also excited to be how bad it can be at it's worst, because I'm thinking even at it's worst, it will be reasonable. My biggest fear with this card is how it might make otherwise great opening hands clunkier, and too hard to keep. Like before, if your opening hand was Loam, Land, Land, Land, Haakon, Souls, and then X, X could be almost anything, and that hand was fine. Any removal spell, Liliana, Damnation, Raven's Crime, etc. If that card is Noxious Revival, that hand becomes a little tough to keep due to no real interaction.
Basically, Noxious Revival is almost in the vein of GGT, where it helps our engine, but is awful in our opening hand, because it's "uncastable", and adds to the uncastable cards we can draw, where we need our early draws and plays to be interactive. That is a scary thought because obviously Noxious basically needs to be in our opening hand or it doesn't do anything, because ideally, we'll be dredging after a few turns. However, I think this is still ok, because in your opening hand, if you have any spell, or even Liliana, it won't be "dead".
It's really hard to theorize, so we'll see how it is in actual matches.
Part III: The Sideboard and How it Got There
Ok, so, about that sideboard, I mentioned a few posts ago that I spent a bit of time and did an exercise to try to refine my sideboard. Below are some of the notes from that, but let me explain, first. The goal of this is to take each matchup, and (ignoring your sideboard) just make the deck the best 60 cards you can against that deck. So for example, for Affinity, I would ideally replace the 10 cards on the right with the 10 on the left. Consider that the goal is to have no bad cards for the matchup anymore, and for cards to bring in, you want to keep it within reason. Like Mutavault for example is a card that would be good to have in against Affinity (a potentially infinite blocked for Etched Champion that be tutored by Knight), and it is reasonable that we would be able to fit a Mutavault in our main or side, somewhere, if it made sense given the other matchups. In other words, Mutavault is reasonable, but saying you're going to side in a pile of Katakis and Creeping Corrosions on top of your Stony Silences isn't.
Also, don't take too much stock in the numbers, some might be off by 1 due to maindeck changes (like Darkblast). Doing this made me realize that keeping track of the numbers wasn't actually necessary. The point is to see what cards are weak and strong in the matchups. Also note that in each grouping, I've ordered the cards by what I feel is the most important cards to come in and out, in order from top to bottom. In other words, against Affinity, the #1 card I want to bring in is Smallpox, and the #1 I want to take out is Liliana. I think keeping your lists ordered this way is what makes keeping track of the numbers irrelevant, because if I take sometime out, and suddenly have 1 more slot to side in or out, or all of the cards in the "In" list don't make it into the end sideboard (spoiler alert: obviously, they all don't), it doesn't matter, because you just replace the top X cards from your "Out" list with however many you have to bring in from your "In" list.
Pod is included because I did this Saturday, right before the bannings (lol). Delver, also was done before that, so keep that in mind. Also, I stopped before doing Ascension, because I haven't played against that deck in so long, but I'll probably do it, soon.
So let's look at some examples of what this kind of information this data can show us. If you've been reading since the beginning (congrats on that btw), I mentioned adding the 4th Smallpox. Look at Smallpox in each matchup. Ideally, I was bringing in the 4th in almost every matchup, and only siding out a single one against Delver (which should be a less prominent deck, now). This told me the 4th should just be in the maindeck.
Now, how did I slim this down into an actual sideboard? Well, it was kind of like sculpting. I started by taking every single card included in every "In" list, and put it into one big list. Not cumulatively, I just merged them. This gave me about 30-ish cards. From there, I just went down the list of them, and re-reviewed how much weight they held, based on 1) How many matchups am I bringing them in, 2) How important are those matchups (am I already strong against those decks, etc) 3) What "rank" are they in my list of what I'm bringing in 4) How many other cards we have to bring in (want to make sure I'm at least getting all the really bad cards in the matchup out).
And basically I just whittled it down using that thought process. The first 10-ish cuts were simple. The last 5 or so were really difficult, and were the cards where I could 100% see swapping out some cards once we see how the metagame develops. Siege Rhino in particular were some of the last 3 cuts, and I think they have a place in our sideboard, but again, based on my plan, I was only bringing them in against 2 decks, and one of those decks I don't think it would help enough (Burn), and one of them we're already fairly strong against anyway (Scapeshift).
I could talk about specific card choice for my sideboard now, but honestly, I think showing you those notes and giving that process should explain the selection for every card in my sideboard, since you can see exactly where I play on bringing it in. One thing to note is that there are some cards in the side that I gave bonus points just due to their versatility. Torpor Orb, specifically. You can see I'm not bringing it in against many decks (especially with Pod gone), but I feel like this is a card that's good to have in your side because you find it good in random matchups. Similar thought with Courser. Courser comes in for specific matchups, but can also just be a good card to bring in that will be better than something you want to take out because it's weak in the matchup.
Anyway, this was a hell of a post, so I'll end it here. But looking forward to playing more!
I see everyone found their way back to this today. What a coincidence, haha. I've actually been still playing the deck the last few months, though just not playing as much in general as I was a few months back when this thread was at its height.
The last time I updated here I said I wanted to redo my sideboard 100% from scratch and that I would post the process/results. Ironically, I finally sat down and over the span of about 3 hours this last Saturday, went through it all...then I was reminded that the bans were happening today, and now I feel like some (but not all) of that time was wasted. I definitely enjoyed the mental exercise of doing the sideboard the way I did it, and now I have a method and something to go off of in the future.
I won't go into too much about the "current" sideboard now (I'll probably post my current list tonight), but my plan is to see how the metagame shapes up in the next couple of weeks, and then redo the sideboard again. Until then, I'll probably keep most of it as is.
My initial thoughts at the bannings, but on specific card choice for the deck, and also just in general:
1) Affinity is going to come back in a major way, and I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the top deck with no contention
1b) This is annoying because no/less Delver and no Pod makes Darkblast probably less important, but Affinity almost certainly coming back into the forefront makes it more important -- so it becomes a question of how much. I had upped my maindeck count to 3 with the 4th in the side, and I think I will maintain that under the assumption that there will be tons of affinity, until proven otherwise. Not to mention if people start to play other creature decks (Zoo, Junk) in the absence of Pod, Darkblast may be good still, depending on the creature choices. ...Probably not great against those decks, though.
2) Junk is going to be a big deck. I definitely think the thing holding this deck back was Pod, and now it's going to be the deck to try to compete with Affinity. Before, the BGx decks were all over the place. Jund, Junk, straight BG with Tec Edge, etc. Now, with Rhino, I think we'll see this archetype converge into only Junk.
3) Side note about Rhino, when I was cutting down my sideboard cards, 2 of the 3 last cards to be cut were Siege Rhino. With the metagame obviously shifting, I would not be surprised be able to fit these into my sideboard, now. I saw them being useful against both Burn and Scapeshift, though I wanted to test the sideboarded burn matchup to see how much my sideboarding plan actually mattered to see if it was worth even bothering. I think it might be (especially with burn losing Cruise), but that's a conversation for another post when I go into more detail about sideboard discussion.
4) Grave troll: Already explained this to one of my playtesting friends. I feel like this card being unbanned does absolutely nothing for our deck. This is a card for a Vengevine deck full of creates and Golgari Thugs, etc. In our deck, this thing will come in 2, 3, maybe 5 counters, tops, and provides us basically no functionality that KotR/Stinkweed Imp don't already provide. Dredge 6 is insignificantly better than Dredge 5, and I would MUCH rather have an interactive card that I can cast on turn 3, over a non-interactive card I don't even want to cast, and can't until turn 5. And as far as "finishing power", infinitely recurring KotR does it way better than this guy does. I don't want another card in the deck beyond the 3 Haakons that I feel like I NEED to discard, which is what Grave Troll would be. I would much rather have Stinkweed Imp in the graveyard so I can dredge it, but I'm also not unhappy casting it when it's already in my hand.
Anyway, that's enough for now. I'll post my list later on and maybe a highlight of the sideboard choices and how I'm going to change that given what I expect to see in the next 2 weeks.
It's sad this thread has not had any activity in the past weeks . I think the main reason is that this deck seems not to be a good choice in the current metagame... I'm exploring other options to have a decent matchup against burn and U/R delver; the "new" rising treasure cruise/swiftspear delver deck is, IMO, harder to beat and burn keeps on being more and more prevalent in paper meta...
How is your matchup against UR delver right now? Do we need to tweak the deck a little?
I actually have been meaning to touch base with the thread, and check in every so often, but I've been crazy busy the last couple of weeks, and haven't been playing much. On top of that, I got a new computer, and didn't have my login saved or anything on here, so that added to me not posting.
However, I've been trying to find time to redo my sideboard from scratch, and that was what I planned to post about next. In the last weekly I played in, I noticed that my sideboard plans were all out of whack, and I had too many cards for some matchups and not enough for others. So I wanted to start from scratch and do it right, by making "ideal lists" for each matchup, and then finding common grounds to form a sideboard. I'll probably go into detail on this more later.
As for Burn and UR matchups. It's funny, because UR Delver decks used to be one of our best matchups before treasure cruise. A few weeks ago, after the new decks become popular, my testing friend and I put together UR delver and I tested against it, and the tests didn't go well. It was a very small sample size, and I think the matchup is actually close to 50/50, but here's my thoughts:
The problem is actually not Treasure Cruise, it's Monastery Swiftspear and the additional burn.
Typically, in these matchups, them drawing a bunch of extra cards didn't matter because they had no actual way of killing you because every single threat UR used to play (Delver, Pyromancer/tokens, Snapcaster, Clique) all died to Darkblast and they can't counter Decay. Generally, you'd start the game with some kind of removal (Decay, Smallpox, Liliana) or Souls to stall until you got a Darkblast online, at which point, as long as you didn't get burned out (which they generally only played 4 bolts and snaps, so that took a long time).
Monastery Swiftspear is a huge problem because it's basically impossibly to kill with Darkblast. You can get it with Darkblast dredge Darkblast on turn 2 if you're on the play, but that's about it. You'd think with all the other removal it would be easy to kill, but I found it difficult without a Decay, and even that they can defend with a Vapor Snag.
Also, they're playing more burn than before with the addition of Forked Bolts...which is doubly annoying because it's amazing at undoing a turn we spend casting Souls to fog for a turn.
Last, I had already made the plunge a couple of months back to put the Bojuka Bog back in the deck... if you're still on the fence, I suggest you try it again. Besides countering snapcaster, which it did before, it's effective at cutting them off of Treasure Cruise long enough to find a way to make them discard it. And it doesn't feel as bad just drawing it and playing it to stop Treasure Cruise...just don't get greedy. If they're at 4 or 5 cards in the library, and you can play Bog from hand, don't wait, just clear it.
As for burn...yeah. When I rethink my sideboard, I might do some play testing with more sideboard cards to see if i can improve the matchup. I like the idea of Sun Droplet with some incidental life gain, like Coursers in the side. I also want to test Coursers in the side for UR, and hell, if the field is enough UR and Burn and the Coursers help those matchups enough, maybe it's time to try them main deck again. They seem like they would be a good solution to the UR problems (getting burned out and stopping Swiftspear.
But yeah, anyway, when I have some time to do some of the ground work with the sideboard, I'll post up again to discuss.
In some matchups Haakon + Nameless not only pulls it's weight, but actually wins the game. Untapping with haakon for example against pod,zoo,affinity usually, delver, bg rock etc makes them impossible to resolve a threat and untap with it, with the exception of lily in rock. You actually just machinegun down their board and lategame just +6/-6 KotR just for fun. They can't counter the interaction, they can't remove it w/o path or an ooze already on board and little cards they can play matter at that point. While raven's crime attacks their hand, tec+loam attacks their manabase Haakon + nameless clears their board and you just win the game. The only reason you play it last is that first you want to get your engine of loam + raven's crime and dredge going, you want to get a good amount of lands and stem the bleeding by gumming up the board with imp and souls, then after they have no more tricks in their hand or relevant plays to make you resolve haakon, machinegun their board and win. Yes you can play 2 haakon but I think in some matchups (especially pod) you want to see haakon fast since outside of ooze they have no answer to the combo.
Yeah, this is another point in the debate that I didn't even touch on initially. My argument was just describing the pros and cons of the cards in their respective roles (Haakon vs Unburial Rites, KotR vs Grave Titan). But this is also an extremely relevant aspect of the debate. The main benefit of playing something like Rites + Titan is that just a Titan on turn 4 (through Rites), or 6 (from hand) could just potentially win the game where we might have lost, otherwise. But is that actually realistic when our deck has very few cards worth countering, and almost none worth killing? The recursion is a very real benefit.
Obviously the goal is to empty their hand before even playing our finisher, so they don't have a counter/removal to stop the finisher -- but that goes exactly back to my first point. If we're not playing our finisher until they're locked out of the game, it doesn't matter what the finisher is. If you're playing Rites/Titan on turn 4 or 6, and they still have cards, do you expect it not to be countered or killed?
1. By that same logic you can still play knights that end up huge, but you can also dredge/crime your unburial rites into the graveyard and instead of haakon turn 3, you can grave titan turn 4.
I'm not really sure I understand what you mean here, and it seems like you missed my point. The point is that every card in the deck now (Haakon/Inversion/Knight) is a fine card by itself. Sure Haakon has the drawback of needing to be in our Graveyard, but that's barely even a speedbump for us, as we can almost always get him into our Graveyard for positive value, or without any effort, at will. And while Haakon might be a mere 3/3 for 3 when there is no KotR or Inversion involved, at least he's a 3/3. Unburial Rites is literally not a card unless you have something to bring back.
I was also getting blown out by having the onboard trick of haakon in play, with inversion in the grave and the opponent knowing whats in my hand--but then they'd just kill haakon (which is easy as he dies to everything except doom blade and electrolize), then they'd play their threat which is no longer inversion-able--so you don't have removal if they do, which is a super bummer.
I'd have to see the matches, but this sounds like inexperience to me. It definitely sounds like you're trying to play Haakon too soon. I would say in 90% of the games I play, I don't cast Haakon until the opponent has 0-1 cards in hand. I only cast Haakon before this in 1 or 2 situations:
My opponent is playing a creature based deck with few removal spells, and I need to lock them out with Inversion as soon as possible (and I have Inversion ready). Ex: Pod
I have no other real play to make, and I need to start applying pressure so I am losing, so I am willing to take a risk by playing Haakon. This is really rare, and it might not even be correct to do this in a lot of matches (like against a deck with Bolts)
Typically, there is always something better to do instead of play Haakon. Attacking the opponent's hand, or lands, applying pressure with Lingering Souls, setting up defense with Stinkweed, using lands (Wildwood, Canopy), etc.
I do like the knights, they were good. I just wonder if there isn't something to replace the haakon interaction with that would be better. Even a couple of tombstalkers would be pretty good, the deck will just be drawing instead of dredging a bit, or adding a noxious revival or two.
I think the issue here is that you're using the phrase "better" without looking at what "better" really is. You need to identify what this card slot is trying to do for us, and I use the term "slot" for the combination of cards Haakon+KotR+Inversion. The number one priority for this set of cards is that it's our way of winning the game after we've finished locking the opponent out (let's ignore the Haakon + Inversion combo for a minute). Realize that it doesn't matter how slow this process actually is, because the goal is to completely lock the opponent out. It could be a 1/1 for 5 mana that you could play from your graveyard, and it would still meet our needs. Now, of course the less it costs, and the quicker it ends the game, the better it is, but that's not what's relevant, that's only a bonus.
Once we recognize that this is the desired effect of the slot(s), we can look for cards that meet this requirement, but also do other things. In this deck, a KotR and a Grave Titan will finish the game at basically the same speed (about 2 turns) once the opponent is locked out, so the question becomes: would I rather have the option to play a Knight on turn 3 to help me stabilize or provide utility, or would I rather have a Grave Titan to play on turn 6 to help me stabilize and start winning the game?
I think for this deck, the clear winner here is KotR. The fact that we're already play so many lands, including tons of fetches and 1-ofs, due to Loam, makes KotR an amazing fit. I'm sure there are games where we would win by simply playing a Grave Titan from our Hand on turn 6, that we might have lost otherwise. But I think there will be plenty of games we would also by having a dead Unburial Rites in our hand, with nothing to reanimate.
And this is simply comparing Haakon+KotR to Rites+Titan. Now, if we go back and factor Haakon + Nameless into the equation, the points for Haakon go way way up, and in my opinion, it's not even close, anymore.
I've been testing the latest bgnomes and knobobo ish list that you guys have posted on the thread. I like it, it feels like a lot things I enjoy doing in this format--but it turns out that I had misread how Haakon works--and I really don't like it--I thought we could cast knight card while he was in the graveyard (sort of like a bridge from below style thing).
Am I doing it wrong that I think this is either too many hoops to jump through (I'm picking up a nose for 'too cute'), or is it sort of under powered? It seriously didn't cut it for me and this is really my style of deck--I feel like I should have 'gotten it'.
I get a sense that grave titans and unburial rites, or a set of waste not (not tested) would be better, or maybe even bloodghasts or something.
It's tempting to look at Haakon and KotR and say to yourself "why wouldn't I just play Unburial Rites over Haakon, and <6-mana finisher> over KotR?" Here's what you have to realize:
If you play Unburial Rites + Finisher, Rites does nothing by itself, and the Finisher is a dead card until turn 6+. Haakon is still a 3 mana 3/3 by himself (considering we can almost always get him into our graveyard without expending serious resources), and KotR is not only a 15/15 finisher late game when reanimated, but also an excellent card to progress our strategy on turn 3, and provide a ton of utility that fits perfectly with Loam, which we're already playing.
Playing Rites + Finisher doesn't give you access to the Inversion combo. There are plenty of decks that literally cannot win once you untap with Haakon in play, Inversion in the graveyard, and 4-6 mana. So not only is Haakon not useless by himself (like Unburial Rites), but he also has a combo that can essentially win the game against a good number of decks.
On an unrelated note, full art Nameless Inversions guarantees a judge getting called every match. Still worth it.
Quick side note about this. I love foils and promos, so there was no way I wasn't getting the full art Inversions. However, I also got a single regular Inversion, and I keep it in a clear sleeve in my deck box. When an opponent asks what the full art ones do, I simply pull out the normal one and let them read it. I don't want to be put in a position where I need to explain to my opponent what the card does, because I feel like that can either "give away" the combo, where the opponent might not have understood, or it might lead a judge being called later in the game where my opponent complains I tried to withhold information or trick them somehow. I'm not looking to "trick" my opponent, but it's also not my job to explain the cards to them. Just like playing a rogue deck has benefits because people don't know what cards to expect, playing rogue synergies can have the same benefits, because you can catch people game 1 because they didn't realize it combos with Haakon. I've had many opponents not eat an Inversion with an Ooze when they had the chance, and then won because I found Haakon later and still had it.
Been busy the last few days and haven't had a chance to post, but I want to update on a few things, and weigh in on a few things being discussed.
1) Courser vs Smallpox: So I was very very satisfied with how the Courser was performing, and the games I drew it, it seemed very powerful. But while testing it, I couldn't shake this feeling like the card didn't make sense. Finally, after days and days, I realized what I was feeling. Earlier in the thread, we discussed how to really justify a card in the deck that doesn't have graveyard synergy, the card needs to be super high impact. Case in point, our only non-GY-interacting cards are Lili, Smallpox, Decay, Damnation. Of those, Lili and Smallpox don't work out of the GY, but are essential engine pieces to fill our GY. And then Decay and Damnation are ridiculously high impact cards that give us extremely powerful ways of interacting with our opponent.
Then, there's Courser. What does Courser do, exactly? He makes us draw/dredge better. He makes us live longer. He helps us hit land drops better. See where this is going? Courser enhances our game plan, yes, but he doesn't actually do anything on his own. This is so apparent when you put him next the other cards he's fighting for a slot against.
Last week, I also mentioned how Smallpox overperformed for me, and playing Courser in the 3rd Smallpox slot has really made me focus on what Smallpox is doing for me when I cast it, and really made me regain my deep appreciation for this card. Smallpox, quite often, will straight up win you the game when you cast it. Think about this: if your opponent casts a creature on turn 1 or 2, and you Smallpox on 2, you are getting rid of 3 of their cards...that's almost half their opening hand. If you discard a card for value from Smallpox (90%+ of the time), and have Loam, this is like a 3 for 1...
So, I've decided to go back to 3 Smallpox and stop playing the Courser. I still think Courser is an amazing card for the deck, but that says something about the quality of the other cards I'm playing instead of it in my non-GY-interactive slots.
2) This deck is a control deck. This also ties into Smallpox vs Courser, but I want to make sure people don't forget one of the core aspects of this deck. When you're suggesting/evaluating cards for the deck, keep in mind that it's a control deck and then consider the role of the card you're evaluating. For example, Pack Rat, although it's a great discard outlet, and is also incredible with Loam, I think it actually doesn't fit into the deck at all. What would Pack Rat's role be in this deck? It's not really a defensive card. Though with card advantage like Loam, the tokens could be used to chump, there are better defensive options. Pack Rat is a threat, and a way to win the game. In this deck, it is of the utmost importance that our finishers have graveyard recursion. If they don't, it means we have to have it in our opening hand, and then sit on it for the entire game until we're ready to win, and if it's in our opening hand, it's one less card we have to get to the end game. This is why KotR is incredible in this deck. Not only is it good on turn 3 as a flexible threat/answer that works with pieces of our strategy, but it's also a turn 20 finisher out of the graveyard.
Keeping this concept in mind, when I look at a card like Vengeful Pharaoh, I can get on board with this, because this card is similar to Knight, in the sense that it helps us get to the late game if we have it early, but then on turn 20+, it's a finisher. My main concern with this card is that it costs 5 to cast, so it really relies on having a way to discard it. The fact that it's "dead" in some matchups, I think is not as important, because it would be a 1-of, and even if they're creatureless, he can still attack them. This could be a potential sideboard card, though, and I think it offers enough that it's worth testing. I agree with whoever said it makes the most sense against the grindier decks like GBx and Pod.
3) I see some talk about the white Leyline. Just so you guys know, I bring some number of these in in a lot of matchups. For example, I brought a single one in against an opponent playing UWR last night at my weekly, and it literally won me the game. My opponent tapped out for Ajani on 4, so I played Leyline on 4 (drew it after my opener). Later, I forced a Liliana into play, and he had 0 ways of interacting with the Liliana because he couldn't burn her due to the Leyline. Then, the Leyline took the pressure off me to attack Ajani, because he couldn't Ultimate me. By the time my opponent had Cryptics to start bouncing the Leyline, I was pressuring him with Knight, so he had to play the Cryptics to tap my team before attacking, letting me replay the Leyline on my turn. The Leylines are defintiely not only for the burn matchup.
So, speaking of my weekly last night, I did mediocre again. I love this deck because so often, when I lose, it's because I made a mistake that was costly, and could have won, otherwise. I made a huge error against an opponent playing mono-white hatebears that kept me from casting Damnation, twice. Besides that, I lost to the same opponent as the week before playing BW tokens. We went to game 3 again. I didn't draw a Damnation in any of the 3 games, though. I got blown in game 3 when I set up a line where I could Smallpox a Mirran Crusader, and he baited me and responded with Raise the Alarm. I died shortly after. I think that matchup is definitely winnable, but slightly in their favor.
Yeah it's hard to explain why the UR Twin matchup is so good, but it is. It kind of has to do with how Raven's Crime can force them to run their combo into an Abrupt Decay, and all of their aggressive creatures die to Darkblast.
BW Tokens however is a consistently pretty gross matchup. It's certainly winnable with some lucky dredges, but the fact that they can put so little resources into flooding the board means that our sweepers are much less valuable than against something like Fish. Couple that with the fact that they run planeswalkers that are tough for us to pressure through their tokens, and it is pretty tough.
I played the 4th Damnation at the GP, and there were definitely situations where it felt clunky playing that many, which was partly due to the matchups I faced. I do agree that the matchups where you really want it you 100% want as many as you can get.
I don't think I could play Utter End in the maindeck because 4 mana IS a lot. For example, even though it hits Pod, if your opponent goes turn 2 Pod on the play, you are going to give them 2 turns of activating it before you can hit it with this thing anyway. The difference between 2 and 4 mana isn't JUST the turn you can cast it on, it's how much mana you have available to do other things on that turn. You need to be able to sneak in Loams with spare mana for the deck to really function efficiently, and using this to answer an opposing 1-3 mana permanent just puts you behind. Holding this in your hand when your opponent resolves an early Steel Overseer or Cranial Plating will feel AWFUL.
However, in games 2 and 3, the game slows down. Both players bring in hate for the opposing deck as well as large, grindy threats like Keranos, Elspeth, and Batterskull, and suddenly this thing starts to look better. It can also nuke any kind of hate your opponent brings in that can otherwise stop us from playing our deck. In game 1, there just aren't that many MUST ANSWER permanents for us, and almost all of them can be hit by Abrupt Decay anyway. In games 2 and 3 there are much more.
Yeah, after thinking about it more, I think you're right. I actually played against Affinity online after writing this, and payed attention to the fact that game 1 I probably own because my Abrupt Decay hit Ensoul Artifact on turn 2, where if it was Utter End, I would have taken like 15 damage from it alone and definitely lost. Maybe it's still 3 Decay main, and then 2 Utter End side, or something.
I've been thinking how to make Courser of Kruphix work and I figured the only way to run it is either have enough of copies (3+) to have it reliably in opening hand or first couple of draws... or to bring it back from GY. The second seems much more reliable if we can use a mechanism that works from graveyard too. My best bet is either Grim Harvest or Unburial Rites. I like the latter more I think, since that causes Courser to go straight to play and there are no extra conditions to it.
Grim Harvest was a card I looked at a couple of weeks ago, before I was really entertaining the thought of Courser. The thing is, I think it's 100% fine that we can't bring Courser back. I'm not interested in playing Courser from my graveyard on turn 10+. He's not a finisher, he's something that puts our engine into overdrive, and if I'm to the point where I have a lot of stuff in my graveyard that I can consider bringing him back, I probably have better things to play out of my graveyard, like Knight, to just start killing them and end the game. However, playing with Courser more, and starting to play him on turn 3 or 4 more, I have definitely noticed the feeling of hesitance of playing him into my opponent's removal. We play a deck, in general, doesn't care about removal, so having a card that turns that removal on, is kind of bad. However, the main removal that hits him is Path, which is kind of annoying for us, so I'm actually ok with having Courser die if it means he ate a path that my Stinkweed Imp or Knight, or Haakon won't eat. Also, it's one of those things where, if they have it, whatever, it's a 1 for 1, and we got a land (which on turn 3 or 4 is actually really good for us), but if they don't have it, we're off to the races, so I'm willing to take the risk.
For now, I'm still just playing the 1 Courser, but he's been awesome for me, still.
For the record, would Grim Harvest trigger off Spirit tokens going to our graveyard? I'm guessing yes, but if they wouldn't, then I wouldn't even consider playing it. If it works with Spirits, it's an interesting card, though, because besides Courser, it could potentially give us an alternate way to get Knights back when we haven't gotten a Haakon online yet. This isn't really something that that's important, though, and it's a lot of mana, so I don't really think it would be that useful.
Very cool deck that continues to make fringe appearances at events throughout the world. Lots of graveyard-based strategies are performing better these days (so long, DRS!), and Haakon Loam is an awesome deck that seems like a great metagame choice for a lot of players. Most people haven't even heard of it, or have just dreamed of using Haakon and Knight in a competitive context. Hope the Feature Status gives you the press you guys deserve!
Awesome! I hope this can really help garner even more interest in the deck, as I think it's a pretty fantastic meta call right now.
So i followed this Thread quite some time now and I think the deck is amazing.
One thing I'd like to suggest is to somehow add Twilight Mire, since i often found myself with Lili in hand or Haakon in grave but having some awkward Mana in play.
Did anyone make similar experience?
The only problem with Twilight Mire is that the manabase is INCREDIBLY tight. We rarely need the double green off of it, and the ability to filter double black is better provided by Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth. The fact is that the deck needs as many fetchlands as possible because of their value with Loam, needs enough targets for those fetchlands that recurring them with Loam still does something (even when you are milling targets), needs Tectonic Edge and other utility lands to recur with Loam and fetch with Knights, AND still needs to be able to cast its spells. You can't cut fetches or fetch targets for it, which means that you will be cutting utility lands for it. At that point, you need to ask yourself if the extra marginal fixing is worth that utility, especially when its primary function is outclassed by a land already played in the deck.
I took the deck to a local Modern tournament on Sunday for the first time in a few weeks, and I piloted it to a pretty easy 4-0. Still really liking the changes. I dropped the Maelstrom Pulse again for Abrupt Decay on a whim. I really haven't played enough games with Maelstrom Pulse to notice a difference, and I feel like either way is fine. I still have the second Godless Shrine over the Bojuka Bog as well, and I feel like that slot is where the 9th fetch will go in my list anyway. I played against the following decks:
I ran into Baneslayer Angel again, and again I had the Smallpox to clear it out. In the second game against my first Affinity opponent, he kept a hand with double Shrapnel Blast and drew into a Galvanic Blast and another Shrapnel Blast in the first few turns. That's a lot of burn. Horizon Canopy was incredible utility the entire day, and I found myself activating it at least 5-6 times in the tournament.
On an unrelated note, how do folks here feel about Utter End as a one of in the sideboard? I realize it is four mana, but postboard games tend to slow down drastically, and its use would be as a super high-impact catchall that you can have early in your hand as an answer to otherwise troublesome permanents in grindy matchups. You always want to save any non-graveyard based removal for as long as possible anyway, so I feel like the manacost isn't that big of a deal.The main attraction to me is that it can answer a Keranos, God of Storms OR a planeswalker, both cards that the deck can have trouble with. It can also obviously take out any number of other things, but the fact that it can hit both of those grabbed my attention.
Edit: Just missed the Modern Daily tonight, so I ended up doing a bunch of 2 mans instead. Went 4-0, and played against the following:
Tron (2-0)
UR Delver (2-1)
UWR Delver Burn (Jeff Hoogland's deck) (2-0)
Scapeshift (2-0)
Vault of the Archangel closed up soooo many games that I probably would have lost otherwise.
I just got home from playing in my modern weekly. I went 2-2, unfortunately, but that number doesn't really reflect how the deck did. Since I didn't have time to adequately test the Coursers, I just ran 1, in place of a Smallpox. The only change was +1 Damnation in the side up to 2 (along with the 2 main), and cutting 1 Leyline for it. The tourney was smaller this week than usual. Only ~10 players, 4 rounds.
Round 1 I got matched up against Burn (0-2). Not really much to say about this one, except that game 2 I drew Courser and he gained me 6 life in the process of dying, and I think if I had played differently, might have actually given me a chance to win the game.
Round 2 I got paired against UR Twin (2-0). I actually hadn't really played this matchup much, and in my head, the theory seemed like it would be bad for us, but bGnomes had said in the past that it was good, and he was definitely right. I straight up demoralized my opponent game 1. On turn 3, he had a mana tapped from Serum Visions so I cast Smallpox, no counter. He untapped, drew, played nothing and passed. I looked at the second Smallpox in my hand and smiled. He sat on one land for a few turns while I made land drops and dredged, and by the time he drew into more lands, he was too far behind and I was already picking apart his hand with Crime. In Game 2, I drew 2 Abrupt Decays in my opener (the best card in the matchup), and then drew into a third in the first couple of turns. On turn 6, I baited a counter with Smallpox, and then resolved Torpor Orb. After that, it was easy to sit on the Abrupt Decays and ride them to victory. One took out a Blood Moon, and it was pretty smooth sailing from there.
Round 3 was UWR Delver with Stormbreath Dragon (2-0), a matchup I've said is potentially one of our best (I think it rivals Infect as our best matchup). Game 1 he opened with Tarn fetch Mountain, play Lavamancer on the play, and I was worried he was burn. I played a fetch and passed. He played a second Tarn and passed. I got a Tomb, played a Swamp, and played Smallpox, hoping to slow him down enough to maybe win. He cracked, got a Steam Vents and Remanded. I was so happy to see that he wasn't burn. He untapped, played a Delver and passed. I replayed the Smallpox and he didn't have a counter. He instead used Lavamancer and then sacced it, leaving himself only 1 mana up. I Darkblasted the Delver, and that was pretty much the game, though I saw a Stormbreath Dragon through making him discard. Game 2, he was aggressively burning me with Bolts and Helixes and I thought I might just be dead to burn the way he was throwing them at me. I kept him off 5 land with Tec Edge because I had no answer to Dragon. He didn't have it, but it's so easy to keep his threats off the table that it was no problem stifling my own resources to stifle his until I round a Crime to empty his hand. At that point, I was at 5, and I played Courser, who promptly gained me like 4 or 5 life, bringing me well out of burn range.
Round 4 I played against BW Tokens (1-2). Game 1, I had a Ghost Quarter for his Windbrisk heights in time to stop him from activating it the next turn. Then I had a Crime to empty his hand of 3 cards, and a Damnation to clear the board. That's basically a hat trick. Game 2, I was on my way to locking up the game, and I misplayed in a kind of weird situation. He had Rest in Peace out, but I was doing fine, casting 2 Damnations, until I accidentally let a Pack Rat live when I had the answers in hand and just played the spells wrong. Had I killed it, he would have bricked off for a couple of turns, and I would have had a really good chance of taking it. Instead, he won in a few turns of Rats, and then Mowed me over in game 3 in about 3 minutes.
Notes:
I drew the 1 Courser multiple times over the course of the night and he was awesome. Used the information of the top of the deck to make some well informed decisions, and used fetch lands to shuffle to see if I could find better cards. I like playing the 1...however, Smallpox super-overperformed for me all night, even (or rather especially) the time I drew both, against Twin. I think 2 Smallpox is still fine, but I'm not sure which I like more, the third pox, or the Courser. I might rethink a card to cut to fit Courser, instead of cutting Smallpox.
The 4th Damnation in the side, I think is 100% essential. I side them in in so many matchups, and the matchups where you're siding it in, it's the spell you want to see 2 of every game. I can't see myself ever playing less than 4 again.
On Utter End...it's funny, because I didn't see it spoiled earlier, and then at the card store, I was looking through a binder, and I saw Mortify, which I didn't know existed. It got me thinking, but ultimately, I think Abrupt Decay is just better. There aren't that many Creatures/Enchantments that cost 4+ that we care about, yet there are plenty of Artifacts and Planeswalkers we can hit with Decay, specifically the Artifacts that people play as GY hate (Grafdiggers, Relic). However...Utter End...now we're talking. Honestly, I see this as a very strong contender to Decay. I could definitely see myself playing this in the main, possibly as a split with Decay. Maybe 2 Decay 1 Utter End main, with the other Utter End in the side, with no other Decays. I would be tempted to play more Utter Ends, but I don't know, I'd have to test. How often do we need Decay on turn 2 versus how often do we need to kill something that Decay can't hit? That's the real question. Just the fact that Utter End hits Pod is reason about to consider playing it. 4 mana planeswalkers (Garruk, Sorin, Ajani V), Leylines, Keranos, etc. Definitely need to consider it.
Twilight Mire, in a vacuum, would obviously be great for this deck. The problem is what land do you cut? You simply can't cut a basic or shock, because we're already pushing the limits of how low we can on those. That's 8 slots. You could potentially cut a single fetch, but I think that's a mistake. In fact, we were just discussing potentially adding a 9th fetch once we have access to the fetches being reprinted. If you don't cut a fetch, that's 16 slots already locked up, only leaving the 9 "utility" slots left. At this point, it's all a judgement call about what's important to you, and maybe that is a metagame call for where you plan to play the deck. If a specific utility land is underperforming for you, you could definitely replace it.
The main issue I have with playing something like a 1-of Mire is that how much do you really think it will fix your mana? If it's a 1-of, you won't see it that often. If your plan is to Loam into it...by the time you're Loaming, are you really worried about color fixing? If you're Loaming, you probably have access to tons of lands, and almost certainly at least 1 fetch, which should be all you need to get whatever colors you need. Personally, I rarely have issues with mana, when it comes to colors. With 8 fetches, and Loam, and even Knight as a potential fixer, it just doesn't come up for me often. So while Mire would be nice, it's not essential, and the slot is more useful as a land that "does something".
Hey guys, I don't know if Creeping Renaissance has been discussed in the deck as a way to re-buy non-Knight permanents. And is this deck the home that Worm Harvest has been looking for?
At first I misread this card (just one page back) and missed the "permanent" part of the effect. Thought I had stumbled on something ridiculous but alas, it was not to be. You must ask the question "what non-knight permanents do I want to be getting back?". Recent lists only have LotV, imp, lands, and sideboard cards. Imp and lands you can already get back via dredge pretty easily. Lilly and sideboard cards probably won't help you by the time you can cast Renaissance for it's flashback cost. I do think some kind of Eternal Witness effect would be great, allowing you to snag that Damnation or Abrupt Decay you dredged up when you really need it, but nothing I've seen really works once it's in the yard. You definitely don't want to be keeping Eternal Witness or Noxious Revival or some such in your opening hand hoping you dredge up the right answer when you need it. Entomb effects like Jarad's Orders seem great too but again has the issue of not being playable once you've dredged them.
Harvest seems like it could be good and in fact has been discussed a couple times. Probably could be ran as a one of if you can find something you want to cut but the list is pretty tight. If you don't cut removal for it, it dilutes the Knight plan and is much slower than Lingering Souls.
Would like to see something cool in KTK for this deck from the sultai (not requiring blue mana) or abzan wedges. A good cheap delve card, self-mill + utility, or something that you have access to from the yard.
Yeah, Worm Harvest was a card on my radar when I first started playing with the deck. I thought it was perfect as a 1-of finisher, but the truth is, Knight is just better in that regard, but Knight is also good on turn 3, where Worm Harvest is mostly dead for quite some time. I don't want to have cards like that when we already have hands where we have dead Haakons, and other spells that are low impact.
About KTK, yeah, I'm super excited to see if there's anything we can use. The Abzan Charm might be sweet, and Delve is certainly a great keyword for us, if the card fits. Also, given the theme of these tribes, I wouldn't be surprised to see some Knights we could consider.
Yeah that sounds like a weird tournament. Pretty cool that you guys get 5 rounds for weekly Modern though, how many people were there?
I've played against the UB Mill deck in a total of 3 rounds with this deck, and every single one went almost exactly how you described. They mill us, then we cast Haakon->Knight and 1 shot them. Or just play a Knight from our starting hand. Occasionally we are about a turn too slow and lose, but I've found it to be reasonably favorable.
How many Leyline of Sanctity are you playing in your board nowadays? Because it's interesting that you played against two decks that get completely hosed by it and you didn't see it once.
The most consistent way I win the burn matchup in game 1 is by Smallpoxing their greedy one-land keep. Vault of the Archangel seems to give another possible angle to fight them on, which I'm pretty excited about.
Best of luck next time you play it! Hopefully you run into some more tier decks.
I'm actually not sure how many people were there. I never pay attention to that kind of stuff, but we get 5 rounds pretty consistently.
As far as UB Mill goes, I don't really like the matchup, personally. It feels like we're generally too slow, and the matchup doesn't leave a lot of room for interaction/play. A single Archive Trap is almost impossible to beat, even with turn 3 Knight, so it comes down to a lot of "do they have it?" "do I have it?" moments, which I don't like. Leyline is obviously as good here as it is against Burn, though.
Now that we have access to 10 fetchlands, Modern will probably have manabases similar to legacy meaning there will be the same amount or more fetches than mana producing lands in many of lists. What would you take out for 2-4 Windsweapt Heath?
I would not play Windsweapt Heath since black is our most important color. I think the current manabase doesn't benefit of the Onslaught fetches at all.
It's true that we already had the two best fetches for the deck (something only RUG can also say), so we aren't affected nearly as much as other decks are. However, I think there are two important options the Onslaught fetches give the deck.
We can play more than 8 fetches now. I don't know if the manabase has room for this, but fetches are SOOOO valuable in this deck that it might be worth it to run 9-10.
We can run more varied fetches. Being able to cast Life from the Loam targeting two different fetches is much more valuable than targeting two copies of the same one, so I know that I will at LEAST be replacing 1x Marsh Flats with 1x Windswept Heath.
I think the fetch configuration I will start with post-Khans is:
I think 9 fetches is a good number, and this seems to give us consistently varied fetches while still putting emphasis on the better ones for the deck. Does anyone else have any input about this?
I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. My first instinct is that Windswept Heath is just worse than Catacombs and Marsh Flats. You raise an interesting point about variety, though, and I'm interested in this. At first, I thought having a few of the third wouldn't increase our options, but it actually does, once I started thinking about it. If you're looking to have fetching options, the goal is to return any 2 different fetching to your hand. So having a couple of Heaths lets that happen more often. Is that worth Windswept Heath not being able to fetch a basic Swamp? I'm not sure, but I think that's what it all boils down to. It's Loaming versatility vs How often we need a basic Swamp and have Heath. I've had a couple of games where I had all the same type of fetch in the graveyard, so I had to take 3 to get the color I wanted, when I would have taken a basic, otherwise, so this is definitely reasonable.
The other part of this discussion is whether we want a 9th fetch now. This is something I touched on in my very first post in the thread, but now that I've worked on the manabase myself, quite a bit, it's a tough call. As much as I would love more fetches, because they're the best thing with Loam, I'm just not sure we can actually fit a 9th. What land would we cut? There is no way I can cut a basic or shock (I'm already down to 4 of each, with 2 Overgrown Tombs, and 2 Swamps). And every utility land is more or less locked in for me, but here's how I rank them on a scale of "I will never cut" to "I like it, but I would live without it":
Tec Edge #1
Tec Edge #2
Ghost Quarter
Urborg #1
Horizon Canopy
Vault
Urborg #2
Bojuka Bog
Stirring Wildwood
As I've mentioned before, the Wildwood is the least exciting land to me, and I very, very rarely use it. I figured it was just kind of a free-roll up until now, because there wasn't really anything better, and it was nice to have the utility if I wanted it, with Knight, but I think that would be my cut if I wanted a 9th fetch. It's definitely worth a try, but something I'll need to think about it a bit more.
Besides all of that, I've got some more videos to post. I've tweaked a couple of cards again, and actually put in a new card I was thinking about and wanted to test. Sadly, I have not gotten to cast it, yet. That card is Courser of Cruphix. I talk about it at the beginning of the first video (vs Turbo Fog), but basically, I think this card can bring a lot to the deck:
It gives us invaluable information about the top card of our deck. There are so many times where if you could draw a certain card (like Smallpox, Abrupt Decay, Damnation, etc), it would be a backbreaker. In these situations, unless you absolutely need to draw to an out, you almost always Dredge, because it's safer to just try to get value. Courser let's us see what we would draw, and inform us whether we want to Dredge or not. Of course, this also informs our opponent, especially in the case of Damnation, but I still think this is extremely powerful.
As I've mentioned before, Loam is such a crucial aspect to Dredge decks because if you're dredging every turn, you're not drawing lands, so Loam lets you keep hitting land drops. Courser can potentially do the same thing. This guy can let us hit land drops off the top of our deck while dredging action cards like Stinkweed Imp and Darkblast every turn, either elimination or decreasing the amount of times we're locked into dredging Loam just to hit land drops for the next 3 turns.
Fetchlands. What puts this guy over the top is his interactions with fetch lands, which are obviously so essential to our deck to begin with. Fetch lands make both of the above 2 points better by giving us shuffle effects to get a "rebuy" on the top of our library. On top of that, this guy mitigates the significant amount of damage we do to ourselves playing (and replaying with Loam) so many fetches. He can turn a fetch land into a net positive life gain if you fetch a basic. This is very relevant considering how common it is for us to do 4-5 damage to ourselves VERY consistently in any given game.
Now, of course there are downsides:
Most obvious is that this guy has no synergy out of Graveyard. If he was a Centaur Knight, he would be absolutely ridiculous. However, I still think what he brings to the table has so potentially, he might be worth it, anyway. Also, I wouldn't necessarily feel bad milling him later, because he's the kind of card you want to play on turn 3 or 4, or not play at all. So if he's not in our opening hand, it's not that bad.
He is double green. This isn't even necessarily that big of a deal, but it's something that must be kept in mind, because this means we need BB (Liliana), GG (Courser), and GW (Knight), potentially, all on turn 3. Considering our first land is typically an Overgrown Tomb, anyway, I don't think it's a problem, but just something to keep in mind.
So yeah, I put 2 in, and was playing the following videos with them, but sadly, never drew one in my opener, so I've yet to actually cast him. I'll definitely give you most feedback on him, once I do.
I don't think it's unreasonable to want the 4th Crime. If you look at my sideboarding notes, I had wanted to bring the 4th in in all of the combo matchups, and I was really only taking it out against Affinity (again, as I said in my big post's edit, ignore Junk as I found Crime to be good against them). I think the thing with Crime is that it's only really good with Loam. Yes, sometimes you'll have an extra land and be able to just strip away the last 2 cards in their hand, or something like that, but more often than not, you're waiting until you find a Loam to really go to town on their hand. That to me is what makes it a 3-of. I don't really need it in my opening hand, but ideally, I'd like to find one after dredging for a few turns.
Yeah, I agree with that. I like 3 Crimes, which if I understand correctly, gives you two slots, because you're trying to figure out what to play if you don't have a third Haakon? Like kipe85 said, I'd pick two between Smallpox, Knight, and Souls, and I think that order is my order of preference. If you expect a lot of combo, Souls are pretty worthless, where as Knight helps a lot against stuff like Dredge/Pyro Ascension, because you can threaten to Bojuka Bog at instant speed, and it's also a clock, which you need to have. Souls can be considered a clock, but it's typically too slow, unless you completely grind down their resources and have time to actually cast and then kill with them.
Part I: Battling Junk MidrangeLast night I was chilling with my playtest group and one of my friends had been playing pod, so obviously he needed a new deck. We decided to build Junk midrange for him to try (and also to have to test against), and we played about 7-10 games. For reference, here's the list we used:
http://magic.tcgplayer.com/db/deck.asp?deck_id=1224100
We just built that list as-is to use as a starting point, and will be tweaking it in the near future. The games we played were all mainboarded, but I think sideboard favors us more than them (at least with that list), as they only have some Grafdigger's Cages. Even though they have white, they won't be playing Rest in Peace because they have Goyf, so whether they're running Cage/Relic/Crypt, we know those are all a tier below RIP in terms of effectiveness against us, and are all basically speed bumps that are mostly insignificant. Them spending a card on that early means they have less to actually threaten our life total with, and we can just casually draw into a Decay once we've stabilized.
As for how the games went, I think I won about 75% of them, and most of the games weren't even close. The games he won were pretty much all close and could have potentially been turned around. Things of note off the top of my head:
1) Obviously, they're playing maindeck Ooze, and while it can be very good against us, I honestly felt like that it wasn't THAT bad, because I think most of the rest of that deck matches up so poorly against us. There were a couple of games where he had an Ooze in play that I couldn't remove, and I just dredged faster than he could remove stuff and overpowered him with Knights.
2) Siege Rhino was involved in every game I lost. The combination of the initial -3 life, and then generally trampling over a Stinkweed Imp for another few points, or just having no answer at all was a problem. I think we all expect that. The only way to really compete with this, was again, to overpower it with Knight.
3) Related to the Siege Rhino issue, and something to keep in mind, in general, when given the opportunity, I think you basically always want to trade your souls for theirs. Yes keeping souls to potentially chump Goyf/big Oozes is relevant, but I think it's more relevant to keep the board clear so our many edict effects are 100% live. This is our ideal way of dealing with a Rhino.
4) This has been relevant against other decks, obviously, but I don't think it's ever been expressly noted in this thread: sometimes you want to let them do their thing with Liliana for a while. Liliana is laughably bad against us so don't feel obligated to use a card to kill her unless you really feel you need to. For example, if I have only one Abrupt Decay in hand (and other cards to prevent me from discarding the Decay), and they play a Liliana, I'm not going to Decay it. I'm going to save the Decay for something that matters (which isn't much in this matchup) like Ooze or Bob. Liliana +1 helps us more than them, -2 will basically do nothing unless they play it after you play a KotR from hand, and even the ultimate isn't scary if you've already found a loam. I've quite frequently stablized everything else (opponent's creatures and hand) while letting them tick up Liliana each turn, and then only after everything else was taken care of, I played a Lingering Souls and started to attack her. Even last night, against my friend, he had a Liliana on 6, but NO other resources, and I only had 5 lands in play. I just Loamed some lands in my hand the turn before so that if he ulted, I'd have a green mana to make sure I could continue to Loam. It completely negates the ultimate.
5) This is a matchup where you need to be very aware of their manlands and your Tec Edges/Ghost Quarters. It is almost the design of GBx decks to grind you down with 1 for 1s, and then when all is said and done, you both have nothing, but they have manlands. This came up multiple games last night, and having the answer to their lands was crucial. Note that if you get a turn to activate with a knight, You'll almost always want to get your own Wildwood (great against their lands if they have no cards in hand), or a Tec edge. You don't want to miss an opportunity to get these, get something use, then have them draw a removal spell for the Knight next turn and kill you with lands.
6) Darkblast is so on the fence for me in this matchup. Best thing it can do is kill a Bob. Second best is kill an Ooze if they play it on turn 2 (which I think if they know the matchup, they should never ever do), third best is clear away their Lingering Souls. ...That's about all it does. I think if you have Maelstrom Pulses to bring in from the side, this is the first thing to go, especially because it's so much better at kill Souls, but remember it will kill your spirits as well! This actually brings me back to point 3, where if it comes to a decision to Maelstrom Pulse both of your spirits or not, I think it's good to do so to make your edicts better. Then again, if you have a Pulse, you can just Pulse their actual threat (Rhino, Ooze, etc), so I think it really depends on the situation: how many edicts do you have in hand, how many cards do they have, what other creatures are in play, etc.
7) On the topic of Malestrom Pulse, I think it's the best sideboard card in this matchup. Kills Rhino, kills Ooze, clears out spirits, and can kill their graveyard hate. It actually makes me wonder if Putrify is worth considering, specifically in the main, over some number of the Abrupt Decays. Months ago, one of the main tipping points for me in the old Decay/Pulse debate was that Decay was the best card against Twin, and Pulse was useless against it. That alone made me go 100% Decay in the main. Twin has been almost non-existant where I play, and depending on how much it comes back post-ban, I could see bringing some Pulse back into the main. However, I never considered Putrify, which is an entirely different option. Also good against Twin, but obviously doesn't hit some permanents we care about...though in game 1, I have to ask myself which permanents those would be... Most of the non-creature permanents in the main we actually care about happen to be Artifacts, anwyay, like Relic out of the Tron decks, for example. What can be Decayed but not Putrified in game 1 that we can about? Is it nothing?
Edit 8) One other thing I forgot to mention, which hasn't been reflected in the sideboarding notes at the bottom: My friend specifically noted how good Raven's Crime was in the matchup. Since the deck has so much removal, and basically just curves out, Raven's Crime was very useful for getting rid of the last 2-3 cards (mostly removal, sometimes a Rhino, or something), before starting to take over the game. In my original sideboarding thoughts, it was all theory, and I thought maybe I'd want to side out Crimes. Not anymore.
Part II: Current Decklist and Card Discussion
Ok, so, that's enough random thoughts about Junk. Let's keep this post going with what I promised a few nights ago, and let me talk a bit about my current list, and sideboard.
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Marsh Flats
1 Windswept Heath
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
1 Stirring Wildwood
2 Tectonic Edge
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
1 Horizon Canopy
1 Vault of the Archangel
1 Bojuka Bog
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Plains
3 Haakon, Stromgald Scourge
3 Knight of the Reliquary
2 Stinkweed Imp
Planeswalkers (3):
3 Liliana of the Veil
Instants (8):
2 Darkblast
3 Abrupt Decay
2 Nameless Inversion
1 Noxious Revival
Sorceries (16):
4 Life from the Loam
3 Raven's Crime
4 Smallpox
3 Lingering Souls
2 Damnation
3 Leyline of Sanctity
2 Stony Silence
1 Darkblast
2 Damnation
1 Torpor Orb
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Tectonic Edge
1 Ghost Quarter
1 Courser of Kruphix
2 Maelstrom Pulse
Ok, so, let's start with some stuff in the maindeck. Most notable:
1) I'm back to 2 Darkblasts (down from 3, before the bannings), and I'm down to 2 Nameless Inversion. For a while, I had the third Nameless in my sideboard, and I'd like the third back either in the main or side, but I've been doing ok with just the 2. I think the number of decks where we need this to win are small, and I haven't really felt the difference from 3 to 2.
2) Smallpox up to 4. This has been my favorite change. This will become more clear, I think after looking at how I determined the sideboard, but after doing so much work on the sideboard, I realized I wanted the 4th in the side. Then, as I was putting the sideboard together, I realized I would be siding it in in about 80%+ of the matchups, and almost never siding any out...this to me screamed that the 4th should be in the main. I've been playing with it for a bit now, and I can definitely feel it, and definitely approve. There have been many games where I Smallpox turns 2 and 3 back to back and the game is just over. So many decks fold to this card, it's ridiculous. When testing against Junk last night, Smallpox was taken to Inquisition/Thoughtseize 100% of the time, given the opportunity, even over Damnation.
3) Lingering Souls down to 3. I know I said "I would never play this deck without the 4th Souls", but I've secretly been doing it for a few weeks now. It started out because I wanted to try some other stuff, and it's the easiest thing to cut, and it just kinda never made it back in. Similar to Nameless, while it would be nice to have one more, I haven't really felt the 1 missing too much. There have definitely been games where I've been like "man, I could really use a Souls to buy some time", but those games are very few and far between. If I can find a way to put it back, I will, but for now, I'm ok with leaving it at 3.
4) Noxious Revival. I actually have nothing to say about this card for the time being. I just put it in last night to try it out after talking to my friend about it. The theory seems good, but I haven't actually played it yet, so I don't know. I think it's been suggested before and shot down, but after thinking about it more, my theory is that this could be like our version of Snapcaster Mage. There are SO many games I play, where I'm forced to stop dredging and I'm drawing to a single out (almost always Damnation or Decay). Being able to EoT put it on top and then draw it just seems too useful to pass up. There are also times when I'd love to hit a land drop, but don't want to spend 2 mana to dredge Loam and cast it. This can work in those situations also. This even has some small potential for graveyard "hate", like against unburial rites.
Typically, the main drawback to a card like this is that it's card disadvanatge. The card goes on your library, not into your hand, so you're spending a card for "nothing". But I think in our deck, this is a non-factor. We're not worried about card advantage...dredging gives us way more card advantage than any other deck. So in theory, this card seems like the real deal. I'm excited to actually cast it and see what it does for me, of anything. I'm also excited to be how bad it can be at it's worst, because I'm thinking even at it's worst, it will be reasonable. My biggest fear with this card is how it might make otherwise great opening hands clunkier, and too hard to keep. Like before, if your opening hand was Loam, Land, Land, Land, Haakon, Souls, and then X, X could be almost anything, and that hand was fine. Any removal spell, Liliana, Damnation, Raven's Crime, etc. If that card is Noxious Revival, that hand becomes a little tough to keep due to no real interaction.
Basically, Noxious Revival is almost in the vein of GGT, where it helps our engine, but is awful in our opening hand, because it's "uncastable", and adds to the uncastable cards we can draw, where we need our early draws and plays to be interactive. That is a scary thought because obviously Noxious basically needs to be in our opening hand or it doesn't do anything, because ideally, we'll be dredging after a few turns. However, I think this is still ok, because in your opening hand, if you have any spell, or even Liliana, it won't be "dead".
It's really hard to theorize, so we'll see how it is in actual matches.
Part III: The Sideboard and How it Got There
Ok, so, about that sideboard, I mentioned a few posts ago that I spent a bit of time and did an exercise to try to refine my sideboard. Below are some of the notes from that, but let me explain, first. The goal of this is to take each matchup, and (ignoring your sideboard) just make the deck the best 60 cards you can against that deck. So for example, for Affinity, I would ideally replace the 10 cards on the right with the 10 on the left. Consider that the goal is to have no bad cards for the matchup anymore, and for cards to bring in, you want to keep it within reason. Like Mutavault for example is a card that would be good to have in against Affinity (a potentially infinite blocked for Etched Champion that be tutored by Knight), and it is reasonable that we would be able to fit a Mutavault in our main or side, somewhere, if it made sense given the other matchups. In other words, Mutavault is reasonable, but saying you're going to side in a pile of Katakis and Creeping Corrosions on top of your Stony Silences isn't.
Also, don't take too much stock in the numbers, some might be off by 1 due to maindeck changes (like Darkblast). Doing this made me realize that keeping track of the numbers wasn't actually necessary. The point is to see what cards are weak and strong in the matchups. Also note that in each grouping, I've ordered the cards by what I feel is the most important cards to come in and out, in order from top to bottom. In other words, against Affinity, the #1 card I want to bring in is Smallpox, and the #1 I want to take out is Liliana. I think keeping your lists ordered this way is what makes keeping track of the numbers irrelevant, because if I take sometime out, and suddenly have 1 more slot to side in or out, or all of the cards in the "In" list don't make it into the end sideboard (spoiler alert: obviously, they all don't), it doesn't matter, because you just replace the top X cards from your "Out" list with however many you have to bring in from your "In" list.
Anyway, on to the notes:
Pod is included because I did this Saturday, right before the bannings (lol). Delver, also was done before that, so keep that in mind. Also, I stopped before doing Ascension, because I haven't played against that deck in so long, but I'll probably do it, soon.
So let's look at some examples of what this kind of information this data can show us. If you've been reading since the beginning (congrats on that btw), I mentioned adding the 4th Smallpox. Look at Smallpox in each matchup. Ideally, I was bringing in the 4th in almost every matchup, and only siding out a single one against Delver (which should be a less prominent deck, now). This told me the 4th should just be in the maindeck.
Now, how did I slim this down into an actual sideboard? Well, it was kind of like sculpting. I started by taking every single card included in every "In" list, and put it into one big list. Not cumulatively, I just merged them. This gave me about 30-ish cards. From there, I just went down the list of them, and re-reviewed how much weight they held, based on 1) How many matchups am I bringing them in, 2) How important are those matchups (am I already strong against those decks, etc) 3) What "rank" are they in my list of what I'm bringing in 4) How many other cards we have to bring in (want to make sure I'm at least getting all the really bad cards in the matchup out).
And basically I just whittled it down using that thought process. The first 10-ish cuts were simple. The last 5 or so were really difficult, and were the cards where I could 100% see swapping out some cards once we see how the metagame develops. Siege Rhino in particular were some of the last 3 cuts, and I think they have a place in our sideboard, but again, based on my plan, I was only bringing them in against 2 decks, and one of those decks I don't think it would help enough (Burn), and one of them we're already fairly strong against anyway (Scapeshift).
I could talk about specific card choice for my sideboard now, but honestly, I think showing you those notes and giving that process should explain the selection for every card in my sideboard, since you can see exactly where I play on bringing it in. One thing to note is that there are some cards in the side that I gave bonus points just due to their versatility. Torpor Orb, specifically. You can see I'm not bringing it in against many decks (especially with Pod gone), but I feel like this is a card that's good to have in your side because you find it good in random matchups. Similar thought with Courser. Courser comes in for specific matchups, but can also just be a good card to bring in that will be better than something you want to take out because it's weak in the matchup.
Anyway, this was a hell of a post, so I'll end it here. But looking forward to playing more!
The last time I updated here I said I wanted to redo my sideboard 100% from scratch and that I would post the process/results. Ironically, I finally sat down and over the span of about 3 hours this last Saturday, went through it all...then I was reminded that the bans were happening today, and now I feel like some (but not all) of that time was wasted. I definitely enjoyed the mental exercise of doing the sideboard the way I did it, and now I have a method and something to go off of in the future.
I won't go into too much about the "current" sideboard now (I'll probably post my current list tonight), but my plan is to see how the metagame shapes up in the next couple of weeks, and then redo the sideboard again. Until then, I'll probably keep most of it as is.
My initial thoughts at the bannings, but on specific card choice for the deck, and also just in general:
1) Affinity is going to come back in a major way, and I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the top deck with no contention
1b) This is annoying because no/less Delver and no Pod makes Darkblast probably less important, but Affinity almost certainly coming back into the forefront makes it more important -- so it becomes a question of how much. I had upped my maindeck count to 3 with the 4th in the side, and I think I will maintain that under the assumption that there will be tons of affinity, until proven otherwise. Not to mention if people start to play other creature decks (Zoo, Junk) in the absence of Pod, Darkblast may be good still, depending on the creature choices. ...Probably not great against those decks, though.
2) Junk is going to be a big deck. I definitely think the thing holding this deck back was Pod, and now it's going to be the deck to try to compete with Affinity. Before, the BGx decks were all over the place. Jund, Junk, straight BG with Tec Edge, etc. Now, with Rhino, I think we'll see this archetype converge into only Junk.
3) Side note about Rhino, when I was cutting down my sideboard cards, 2 of the 3 last cards to be cut were Siege Rhino. With the metagame obviously shifting, I would not be surprised be able to fit these into my sideboard, now. I saw them being useful against both Burn and Scapeshift, though I wanted to test the sideboarded burn matchup to see how much my sideboarding plan actually mattered to see if it was worth even bothering. I think it might be (especially with burn losing Cruise), but that's a conversation for another post when I go into more detail about sideboard discussion.
4) Grave troll: Already explained this to one of my playtesting friends. I feel like this card being unbanned does absolutely nothing for our deck. This is a card for a Vengevine deck full of creates and Golgari Thugs, etc. In our deck, this thing will come in 2, 3, maybe 5 counters, tops, and provides us basically no functionality that KotR/Stinkweed Imp don't already provide. Dredge 6 is insignificantly better than Dredge 5, and I would MUCH rather have an interactive card that I can cast on turn 3, over a non-interactive card I don't even want to cast, and can't until turn 5. And as far as "finishing power", infinitely recurring KotR does it way better than this guy does. I don't want another card in the deck beyond the 3 Haakons that I feel like I NEED to discard, which is what Grave Troll would be. I would much rather have Stinkweed Imp in the graveyard so I can dredge it, but I'm also not unhappy casting it when it's already in my hand.
Anyway, that's enough for now. I'll post my list later on and maybe a highlight of the sideboard choices and how I'm going to change that given what I expect to see in the next 2 weeks.
I actually have been meaning to touch base with the thread, and check in every so often, but I've been crazy busy the last couple of weeks, and haven't been playing much. On top of that, I got a new computer, and didn't have my login saved or anything on here, so that added to me not posting.
However, I've been trying to find time to redo my sideboard from scratch, and that was what I planned to post about next. In the last weekly I played in, I noticed that my sideboard plans were all out of whack, and I had too many cards for some matchups and not enough for others. So I wanted to start from scratch and do it right, by making "ideal lists" for each matchup, and then finding common grounds to form a sideboard. I'll probably go into detail on this more later.
As for Burn and UR matchups. It's funny, because UR Delver decks used to be one of our best matchups before treasure cruise. A few weeks ago, after the new decks become popular, my testing friend and I put together UR delver and I tested against it, and the tests didn't go well. It was a very small sample size, and I think the matchup is actually close to 50/50, but here's my thoughts:
The problem is actually not Treasure Cruise, it's Monastery Swiftspear and the additional burn.
Typically, in these matchups, them drawing a bunch of extra cards didn't matter because they had no actual way of killing you because every single threat UR used to play (Delver, Pyromancer/tokens, Snapcaster, Clique) all died to Darkblast and they can't counter Decay. Generally, you'd start the game with some kind of removal (Decay, Smallpox, Liliana) or Souls to stall until you got a Darkblast online, at which point, as long as you didn't get burned out (which they generally only played 4 bolts and snaps, so that took a long time).
Monastery Swiftspear is a huge problem because it's basically impossibly to kill with Darkblast. You can get it with Darkblast dredge Darkblast on turn 2 if you're on the play, but that's about it. You'd think with all the other removal it would be easy to kill, but I found it difficult without a Decay, and even that they can defend with a Vapor Snag.
Also, they're playing more burn than before with the addition of Forked Bolts...which is doubly annoying because it's amazing at undoing a turn we spend casting Souls to fog for a turn.
Last, I had already made the plunge a couple of months back to put the Bojuka Bog back in the deck... if you're still on the fence, I suggest you try it again. Besides countering snapcaster, which it did before, it's effective at cutting them off of Treasure Cruise long enough to find a way to make them discard it. And it doesn't feel as bad just drawing it and playing it to stop Treasure Cruise...just don't get greedy. If they're at 4 or 5 cards in the library, and you can play Bog from hand, don't wait, just clear it.
As for burn...yeah. When I rethink my sideboard, I might do some play testing with more sideboard cards to see if i can improve the matchup. I like the idea of Sun Droplet with some incidental life gain, like Coursers in the side. I also want to test Coursers in the side for UR, and hell, if the field is enough UR and Burn and the Coursers help those matchups enough, maybe it's time to try them main deck again. They seem like they would be a good solution to the UR problems (getting burned out and stopping Swiftspear.
But yeah, anyway, when I have some time to do some of the ground work with the sideboard, I'll post up again to discuss.
Yeah, this is another point in the debate that I didn't even touch on initially. My argument was just describing the pros and cons of the cards in their respective roles (Haakon vs Unburial Rites, KotR vs Grave Titan). But this is also an extremely relevant aspect of the debate. The main benefit of playing something like Rites + Titan is that just a Titan on turn 4 (through Rites), or 6 (from hand) could just potentially win the game where we might have lost, otherwise. But is that actually realistic when our deck has very few cards worth countering, and almost none worth killing? The recursion is a very real benefit.
Obviously the goal is to empty their hand before even playing our finisher, so they don't have a counter/removal to stop the finisher -- but that goes exactly back to my first point. If we're not playing our finisher until they're locked out of the game, it doesn't matter what the finisher is. If you're playing Rites/Titan on turn 4 or 6, and they still have cards, do you expect it not to be countered or killed?
I'm not really sure I understand what you mean here, and it seems like you missed my point. The point is that every card in the deck now (Haakon/Inversion/Knight) is a fine card by itself. Sure Haakon has the drawback of needing to be in our Graveyard, but that's barely even a speedbump for us, as we can almost always get him into our Graveyard for positive value, or without any effort, at will. And while Haakon might be a mere 3/3 for 3 when there is no KotR or Inversion involved, at least he's a 3/3. Unburial Rites is literally not a card unless you have something to bring back.
I'd have to see the matches, but this sounds like inexperience to me. It definitely sounds like you're trying to play Haakon too soon. I would say in 90% of the games I play, I don't cast Haakon until the opponent has 0-1 cards in hand. I only cast Haakon before this in 1 or 2 situations:
Typically, there is always something better to do instead of play Haakon. Attacking the opponent's hand, or lands, applying pressure with Lingering Souls, setting up defense with Stinkweed, using lands (Wildwood, Canopy), etc.
I think the issue here is that you're using the phrase "better" without looking at what "better" really is. You need to identify what this card slot is trying to do for us, and I use the term "slot" for the combination of cards Haakon+KotR+Inversion. The number one priority for this set of cards is that it's our way of winning the game after we've finished locking the opponent out (let's ignore the Haakon + Inversion combo for a minute). Realize that it doesn't matter how slow this process actually is, because the goal is to completely lock the opponent out. It could be a 1/1 for 5 mana that you could play from your graveyard, and it would still meet our needs. Now, of course the less it costs, and the quicker it ends the game, the better it is, but that's not what's relevant, that's only a bonus.
Once we recognize that this is the desired effect of the slot(s), we can look for cards that meet this requirement, but also do other things. In this deck, a KotR and a Grave Titan will finish the game at basically the same speed (about 2 turns) once the opponent is locked out, so the question becomes: would I rather have the option to play a Knight on turn 3 to help me stabilize or provide utility, or would I rather have a Grave Titan to play on turn 6 to help me stabilize and start winning the game?
I think for this deck, the clear winner here is KotR. The fact that we're already play so many lands, including tons of fetches and 1-ofs, due to Loam, makes KotR an amazing fit. I'm sure there are games where we would win by simply playing a Grave Titan from our Hand on turn 6, that we might have lost otherwise. But I think there will be plenty of games we would also by having a dead Unburial Rites in our hand, with nothing to reanimate.
And this is simply comparing Haakon+KotR to Rites+Titan. Now, if we go back and factor Haakon + Nameless into the equation, the points for Haakon go way way up, and in my opinion, it's not even close, anymore.
It's tempting to look at Haakon and KotR and say to yourself "why wouldn't I just play Unburial Rites over Haakon, and <6-mana finisher> over KotR?" Here's what you have to realize:
Quick side note about this. I love foils and promos, so there was no way I wasn't getting the full art Inversions. However, I also got a single regular Inversion, and I keep it in a clear sleeve in my deck box. When an opponent asks what the full art ones do, I simply pull out the normal one and let them read it. I don't want to be put in a position where I need to explain to my opponent what the card does, because I feel like that can either "give away" the combo, where the opponent might not have understood, or it might lead a judge being called later in the game where my opponent complains I tried to withhold information or trick them somehow. I'm not looking to "trick" my opponent, but it's also not my job to explain the cards to them. Just like playing a rogue deck has benefits because people don't know what cards to expect, playing rogue synergies can have the same benefits, because you can catch people game 1 because they didn't realize it combos with Haakon. I've had many opponents not eat an Inversion with an Ooze when they had the chance, and then won because I found Haakon later and still had it.
1) Courser vs Smallpox: So I was very very satisfied with how the Courser was performing, and the games I drew it, it seemed very powerful. But while testing it, I couldn't shake this feeling like the card didn't make sense. Finally, after days and days, I realized what I was feeling. Earlier in the thread, we discussed how to really justify a card in the deck that doesn't have graveyard synergy, the card needs to be super high impact. Case in point, our only non-GY-interacting cards are Lili, Smallpox, Decay, Damnation. Of those, Lili and Smallpox don't work out of the GY, but are essential engine pieces to fill our GY. And then Decay and Damnation are ridiculously high impact cards that give us extremely powerful ways of interacting with our opponent.
Then, there's Courser. What does Courser do, exactly? He makes us draw/dredge better. He makes us live longer. He helps us hit land drops better. See where this is going? Courser enhances our game plan, yes, but he doesn't actually do anything on his own. This is so apparent when you put him next the other cards he's fighting for a slot against.
Last week, I also mentioned how Smallpox overperformed for me, and playing Courser in the 3rd Smallpox slot has really made me focus on what Smallpox is doing for me when I cast it, and really made me regain my deep appreciation for this card. Smallpox, quite often, will straight up win you the game when you cast it. Think about this: if your opponent casts a creature on turn 1 or 2, and you Smallpox on 2, you are getting rid of 3 of their cards...that's almost half their opening hand. If you discard a card for value from Smallpox (90%+ of the time), and have Loam, this is like a 3 for 1...
So, I've decided to go back to 3 Smallpox and stop playing the Courser. I still think Courser is an amazing card for the deck, but that says something about the quality of the other cards I'm playing instead of it in my non-GY-interactive slots.
2) This deck is a control deck. This also ties into Smallpox vs Courser, but I want to make sure people don't forget one of the core aspects of this deck. When you're suggesting/evaluating cards for the deck, keep in mind that it's a control deck and then consider the role of the card you're evaluating. For example, Pack Rat, although it's a great discard outlet, and is also incredible with Loam, I think it actually doesn't fit into the deck at all. What would Pack Rat's role be in this deck? It's not really a defensive card. Though with card advantage like Loam, the tokens could be used to chump, there are better defensive options. Pack Rat is a threat, and a way to win the game. In this deck, it is of the utmost importance that our finishers have graveyard recursion. If they don't, it means we have to have it in our opening hand, and then sit on it for the entire game until we're ready to win, and if it's in our opening hand, it's one less card we have to get to the end game. This is why KotR is incredible in this deck. Not only is it good on turn 3 as a flexible threat/answer that works with pieces of our strategy, but it's also a turn 20 finisher out of the graveyard.
Keeping this concept in mind, when I look at a card like Vengeful Pharaoh, I can get on board with this, because this card is similar to Knight, in the sense that it helps us get to the late game if we have it early, but then on turn 20+, it's a finisher. My main concern with this card is that it costs 5 to cast, so it really relies on having a way to discard it. The fact that it's "dead" in some matchups, I think is not as important, because it would be a 1-of, and even if they're creatureless, he can still attack them. This could be a potential sideboard card, though, and I think it offers enough that it's worth testing. I agree with whoever said it makes the most sense against the grindier decks like GBx and Pod.
3) I see some talk about the white Leyline. Just so you guys know, I bring some number of these in in a lot of matchups. For example, I brought a single one in against an opponent playing UWR last night at my weekly, and it literally won me the game. My opponent tapped out for Ajani on 4, so I played Leyline on 4 (drew it after my opener). Later, I forced a Liliana into play, and he had 0 ways of interacting with the Liliana because he couldn't burn her due to the Leyline. Then, the Leyline took the pressure off me to attack Ajani, because he couldn't Ultimate me. By the time my opponent had Cryptics to start bouncing the Leyline, I was pressuring him with Knight, so he had to play the Cryptics to tap my team before attacking, letting me replay the Leyline on my turn. The Leylines are defintiely not only for the burn matchup.
So, speaking of my weekly last night, I did mediocre again. I love this deck because so often, when I lose, it's because I made a mistake that was costly, and could have won, otherwise. I made a huge error against an opponent playing mono-white hatebears that kept me from casting Damnation, twice. Besides that, I lost to the same opponent as the week before playing BW tokens. We went to game 3 again. I didn't draw a Damnation in any of the 3 games, though. I got blown in game 3 when I set up a line where I could Smallpox a Mirran Crusader, and he baited me and responded with Raise the Alarm. I died shortly after. I think that matchup is definitely winnable, but slightly in their favor.
Yeah, after thinking about it more, I think you're right. I actually played against Affinity online after writing this, and payed attention to the fact that game 1 I probably own because my Abrupt Decay hit Ensoul Artifact on turn 2, where if it was Utter End, I would have taken like 15 damage from it alone and definitely lost. Maybe it's still 3 Decay main, and then 2 Utter End side, or something.
Grim Harvest was a card I looked at a couple of weeks ago, before I was really entertaining the thought of Courser. The thing is, I think it's 100% fine that we can't bring Courser back. I'm not interested in playing Courser from my graveyard on turn 10+. He's not a finisher, he's something that puts our engine into overdrive, and if I'm to the point where I have a lot of stuff in my graveyard that I can consider bringing him back, I probably have better things to play out of my graveyard, like Knight, to just start killing them and end the game. However, playing with Courser more, and starting to play him on turn 3 or 4 more, I have definitely noticed the feeling of hesitance of playing him into my opponent's removal. We play a deck, in general, doesn't care about removal, so having a card that turns that removal on, is kind of bad. However, the main removal that hits him is Path, which is kind of annoying for us, so I'm actually ok with having Courser die if it means he ate a path that my Stinkweed Imp or Knight, or Haakon won't eat. Also, it's one of those things where, if they have it, whatever, it's a 1 for 1, and we got a land (which on turn 3 or 4 is actually really good for us), but if they don't have it, we're off to the races, so I'm willing to take the risk.
For now, I'm still just playing the 1 Courser, but he's been awesome for me, still.
For the record, would Grim Harvest trigger off Spirit tokens going to our graveyard? I'm guessing yes, but if they wouldn't, then I wouldn't even consider playing it. If it works with Spirits, it's an interesting card, though, because besides Courser, it could potentially give us an alternate way to get Knights back when we haven't gotten a Haakon online yet. This isn't really something that that's important, though, and it's a lot of mana, so I don't really think it would be that useful.
I just got home from playing in my modern weekly. I went 2-2, unfortunately, but that number doesn't really reflect how the deck did. Since I didn't have time to adequately test the Coursers, I just ran 1, in place of a Smallpox. The only change was +1 Damnation in the side up to 2 (along with the 2 main), and cutting 1 Leyline for it. The tourney was smaller this week than usual. Only ~10 players, 4 rounds.
Round 1 I got matched up against Burn (0-2). Not really much to say about this one, except that game 2 I drew Courser and he gained me 6 life in the process of dying, and I think if I had played differently, might have actually given me a chance to win the game.
Round 2 I got paired against UR Twin (2-0). I actually hadn't really played this matchup much, and in my head, the theory seemed like it would be bad for us, but bGnomes had said in the past that it was good, and he was definitely right. I straight up demoralized my opponent game 1. On turn 3, he had a mana tapped from Serum Visions so I cast Smallpox, no counter. He untapped, drew, played nothing and passed. I looked at the second Smallpox in my hand and smiled. He sat on one land for a few turns while I made land drops and dredged, and by the time he drew into more lands, he was too far behind and I was already picking apart his hand with Crime. In Game 2, I drew 2 Abrupt Decays in my opener (the best card in the matchup), and then drew into a third in the first couple of turns. On turn 6, I baited a counter with Smallpox, and then resolved Torpor Orb. After that, it was easy to sit on the Abrupt Decays and ride them to victory. One took out a Blood Moon, and it was pretty smooth sailing from there.
Round 3 was UWR Delver with Stormbreath Dragon (2-0), a matchup I've said is potentially one of our best (I think it rivals Infect as our best matchup). Game 1 he opened with Tarn fetch Mountain, play Lavamancer on the play, and I was worried he was burn. I played a fetch and passed. He played a second Tarn and passed. I got a Tomb, played a Swamp, and played Smallpox, hoping to slow him down enough to maybe win. He cracked, got a Steam Vents and Remanded. I was so happy to see that he wasn't burn. He untapped, played a Delver and passed. I replayed the Smallpox and he didn't have a counter. He instead used Lavamancer and then sacced it, leaving himself only 1 mana up. I Darkblasted the Delver, and that was pretty much the game, though I saw a Stormbreath Dragon through making him discard. Game 2, he was aggressively burning me with Bolts and Helixes and I thought I might just be dead to burn the way he was throwing them at me. I kept him off 5 land with Tec Edge because I had no answer to Dragon. He didn't have it, but it's so easy to keep his threats off the table that it was no problem stifling my own resources to stifle his until I round a Crime to empty his hand. At that point, I was at 5, and I played Courser, who promptly gained me like 4 or 5 life, bringing me well out of burn range.
Round 4 I played against BW Tokens (1-2). Game 1, I had a Ghost Quarter for his Windbrisk heights in time to stop him from activating it the next turn. Then I had a Crime to empty his hand of 3 cards, and a Damnation to clear the board. That's basically a hat trick. Game 2, I was on my way to locking up the game, and I misplayed in a kind of weird situation. He had Rest in Peace out, but I was doing fine, casting 2 Damnations, until I accidentally let a Pack Rat live when I had the answers in hand and just played the spells wrong. Had I killed it, he would have bricked off for a couple of turns, and I would have had a really good chance of taking it. Instead, he won in a few turns of Rats, and then Mowed me over in game 3 in about 3 minutes.
Notes:
I drew the 1 Courser multiple times over the course of the night and he was awesome. Used the information of the top of the deck to make some well informed decisions, and used fetch lands to shuffle to see if I could find better cards. I like playing the 1...however, Smallpox super-overperformed for me all night, even (or rather especially) the time I drew both, against Twin. I think 2 Smallpox is still fine, but I'm not sure which I like more, the third pox, or the Courser. I might rethink a card to cut to fit Courser, instead of cutting Smallpox.
The 4th Damnation in the side, I think is 100% essential. I side them in in so many matchups, and the matchups where you're siding it in, it's the spell you want to see 2 of every game. I can't see myself ever playing less than 4 again.
On Utter End...it's funny, because I didn't see it spoiled earlier, and then at the card store, I was looking through a binder, and I saw Mortify, which I didn't know existed. It got me thinking, but ultimately, I think Abrupt Decay is just better. There aren't that many Creatures/Enchantments that cost 4+ that we care about, yet there are plenty of Artifacts and Planeswalkers we can hit with Decay, specifically the Artifacts that people play as GY hate (Grafdiggers, Relic). However...Utter End...now we're talking. Honestly, I see this as a very strong contender to Decay. I could definitely see myself playing this in the main, possibly as a split with Decay. Maybe 2 Decay 1 Utter End main, with the other Utter End in the side, with no other Decays. I would be tempted to play more Utter Ends, but I don't know, I'd have to test. How often do we need Decay on turn 2 versus how often do we need to kill something that Decay can't hit? That's the real question. Just the fact that Utter End hits Pod is reason about to consider playing it. 4 mana planeswalkers (Garruk, Sorin, Ajani V), Leylines, Keranos, etc. Definitely need to consider it.
Twilight Mire, in a vacuum, would obviously be great for this deck. The problem is what land do you cut? You simply can't cut a basic or shock, because we're already pushing the limits of how low we can on those. That's 8 slots. You could potentially cut a single fetch, but I think that's a mistake. In fact, we were just discussing potentially adding a 9th fetch once we have access to the fetches being reprinted. If you don't cut a fetch, that's 16 slots already locked up, only leaving the 9 "utility" slots left. At this point, it's all a judgement call about what's important to you, and maybe that is a metagame call for where you plan to play the deck. If a specific utility land is underperforming for you, you could definitely replace it.
The main issue I have with playing something like a 1-of Mire is that how much do you really think it will fix your mana? If it's a 1-of, you won't see it that often. If your plan is to Loam into it...by the time you're Loaming, are you really worried about color fixing? If you're Loaming, you probably have access to tons of lands, and almost certainly at least 1 fetch, which should be all you need to get whatever colors you need. Personally, I rarely have issues with mana, when it comes to colors. With 8 fetches, and Loam, and even Knight as a potential fixer, it just doesn't come up for me often. So while Mire would be nice, it's not essential, and the slot is more useful as a land that "does something".
Yeah, Worm Harvest was a card on my radar when I first started playing with the deck. I thought it was perfect as a 1-of finisher, but the truth is, Knight is just better in that regard, but Knight is also good on turn 3, where Worm Harvest is mostly dead for quite some time. I don't want to have cards like that when we already have hands where we have dead Haakons, and other spells that are low impact.
About KTK, yeah, I'm super excited to see if there's anything we can use. The Abzan Charm might be sweet, and Delve is certainly a great keyword for us, if the card fits. Also, given the theme of these tribes, I wouldn't be surprised to see some Knights we could consider.
I'm actually not sure how many people were there. I never pay attention to that kind of stuff, but we get 5 rounds pretty consistently.
As far as UB Mill goes, I don't really like the matchup, personally. It feels like we're generally too slow, and the matchup doesn't leave a lot of room for interaction/play. A single Archive Trap is almost impossible to beat, even with turn 3 Knight, so it comes down to a lot of "do they have it?" "do I have it?" moments, which I don't like. Leyline is obviously as good here as it is against Burn, though.
I'm not sure how I feel about this yet. My first instinct is that Windswept Heath is just worse than Catacombs and Marsh Flats. You raise an interesting point about variety, though, and I'm interested in this. At first, I thought having a few of the third wouldn't increase our options, but it actually does, once I started thinking about it. If you're looking to have fetching options, the goal is to return any 2 different fetching to your hand. So having a couple of Heaths lets that happen more often. Is that worth Windswept Heath not being able to fetch a basic Swamp? I'm not sure, but I think that's what it all boils down to. It's Loaming versatility vs How often we need a basic Swamp and have Heath. I've had a couple of games where I had all the same type of fetch in the graveyard, so I had to take 3 to get the color I wanted, when I would have taken a basic, otherwise, so this is definitely reasonable.
The other part of this discussion is whether we want a 9th fetch now. This is something I touched on in my very first post in the thread, but now that I've worked on the manabase myself, quite a bit, it's a tough call. As much as I would love more fetches, because they're the best thing with Loam, I'm just not sure we can actually fit a 9th. What land would we cut? There is no way I can cut a basic or shock (I'm already down to 4 of each, with 2 Overgrown Tombs, and 2 Swamps). And every utility land is more or less locked in for me, but here's how I rank them on a scale of "I will never cut" to "I like it, but I would live without it":
As I've mentioned before, the Wildwood is the least exciting land to me, and I very, very rarely use it. I figured it was just kind of a free-roll up until now, because there wasn't really anything better, and it was nice to have the utility if I wanted it, with Knight, but I think that would be my cut if I wanted a 9th fetch. It's definitely worth a try, but something I'll need to think about it a bit more.
Besides all of that, I've got some more videos to post. I've tweaked a couple of cards again, and actually put in a new card I was thinking about and wanted to test. Sadly, I have not gotten to cast it, yet. That card is Courser of Cruphix. I talk about it at the beginning of the first video (vs Turbo Fog), but basically, I think this card can bring a lot to the deck:
Now, of course there are downsides:
So yeah, I put 2 in, and was playing the following videos with them, but sadly, never drew one in my opener, so I've yet to actually cast him. I'll definitely give you most feedback on him, once I do.
Vs Turbo Fog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU5_iurRqIc
Vs Battle of Wits (!): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFSmF0DC33w
Vs Green Devotion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ty7MuNStLiE