I've been having more trouble with control decks than with flooding. I think I'm in the redtwister camp for cavern vs canopy right now. I've been playing with 2x aether hub and I think it feels better. I haven't been stuck on it yet and it has even helped pay for dismember and make EE better from the board.
I'm not saying that I don't like the people who piloted the deck. I'm just saying that some of those deck choices strike me as dangerous. It obviously worked for them (and congrats to them!), but I'm just not so sure it's something that would work for anyone.
That's an excellent point about the prairie. It seems mostly like a slightly worse battlefield forge here. I'm not sure what land could replace it just yet though.
I agree about Ajani. I could see the reach being nice, but I see him being both less versatile and easier to remove.
Excellent points on affinity. In retrospect, I think I'm probably wrong for sideboarding as I did. That's the one place with this deck that I'm not quite 100% on just yet. I had a preconceived notion that if path came in, chalice has to come out and while I think that's very often true, affinity is the perfect place to have both.
You're right that wear//tear is basically just disenchant. It might be harder to cast at times, but I'm viewing it as a wear//tear with a slight upside where we might get the chance to do both modes.
I think we absolutely do want it in the board even if we do have have cast out and nahiri though. It can be used earlier in the game and lets us still have other things to do if it's later on. Being able to EoT blow up that blood moon they cast while not having to have held up 4 mana for something like cast out seems relevant.
I agree about mindcensor VS valakut. It could be decent against tron l and chord decks if we want something more there as well.
I can see pia and kiran being clunky, altho having teach outside of smasher is nice. Chucking an extra chalice at their face does seem good. I may need to test it just as a 1 of and see how it feels.
Both the GW list and the WB E&T from that event are things I would not touch.
The GW list is playing a very risky manabase. I understand why dryad arbor can be strong and it's something I have thought about in the past, but that has to be a low removal meta to be decent. Additionally no fetches with rallier and arbor? Only 6 colorless sources for displacer? I understand he did well, but no thank you.
The WB list moves from dangerous to suicide. 20 lands with smasher MD?
It seems to me that they got VERY lucky and knew the meta extremely well.
I played the list some more today (2 leagues on stream if anybody's curious). I tried Redtwister's mana some and found the following: rugged prairie helps a lot for casting anger of the gods, but it can also get you stuck for colored mana. I'm not convinced it's the land we want yet. This happened more when I was on the 2 cavern plan. I switched around the numbers slightly and it feels like we only get 1x cavern/ canopy slot. My twitch chat suggested cutting a gemstone caverns for another cavern of souls, but I think the 3x gemstone is correct.
Nahiri seems totally fine in the board. Another option my chat presented was Ajani Vengeant. Ajani seems better at grinding, but it can't hit opposing blood moons and what not.
I went 0-3 in my first league on stream. I kept some fairly questionable hands that were frankly quite greedy. I feel like this deck pays off greedy plays, but I perhaps went too far. I then adjusted the manabase slightly and played it in another league. I went 5-0 again with it there.
Something to note for the board; I may want to try to find room for an aven mindcensor. I don't know how often we plan on playing against scapeshift, but it might be nice to have more options where we otherwise don't have a whole lot. However, I think our MU there should still be reasonable.
I just 5-0ed a league with something very similar to the above. My sideboard was slightly different, but the MD was the same. My sideboard had 2 stony, 3 rip, 1 EE, 3 anger, 2 wear/tear, and 1 cast out.
I beat traditional jund 2-0, affinity 2-1, grixis DS 2-1, grixis DS 2-0, and esper DS 2-0.
Affinity was by far the hardest match. He ran me over G1. G2 I led with t1 chalice at 0 into t2 stony and he couldn't quite get there. G3 I pretty much turned into removal.deck where I kept on opener with 2 anger and drew into paths. He mulled and so was pretty threat light.
I beat jund with some unfair mana plays involving arbiter.
DS feels quite favored for us. I'm guessing the jund variant might be slightly harder, but all of these felt very manageable.
The deck feels great.
It seems like we are able to splash R and help our bad go-wide MUs at little cost. The only card I could see missing is something like cavern of souls as I think that card is very much needed in the control MUs. It seems that we lost % against something like WU control with all their paths (less basics) and not having cavern for their counters. I'd like to try to squeeze 1 cavern back in somewhere, but I'm having a bit of a hard time seeing where it would fit with the R splash. It might be that we have to pick between the miser horizon canopy and cavern of souls.
EDIT: I didn't bring nahiri just because I didn't have one. I'm not sure it makes too much of a difference, although I get how she could help us grind. I find it interesting that she plays a similar role as wear/tear, but she's also slower yet more versatile. She's probably worse against something like affinity, but better vs something like RW prison. @Stabil0, can you share your thoughts on the card?
I tried harsh mentor in a build that split him between the MD and SB yesterday with a couple of copter main as well (essentially just replacing the matter reshaper slot). I have to say that I was not that impressed. There were not a lot of MUs that I came across where I would want mentor, but not stony silence and stony felt like it did enough. Granted, my sample size was small, but that was my initial impression.
For go wide strategies, my intuition says that ghostly prison should help us quite a bit, but the big problem I see is that we don't have any evasive creatures and so while put opponents may not be able to profitably attack us, we can't really profitably attack them. Relying on just eldrazi displacer with a ton of mana doesn't seem great there.
EDIT: pyroclasm does kill some of our guys, but might be decent. Has anybody tried that?
DOUBLE EDIT: I see that only battlefield forge as a 4x, potentially gemstone caverns and SSG would add R mana currently, so the manabase might have to add a couple more R/W sources to support it. We already can fold pretty hard to blood moon, so maybe we just don't care?
Could harsh mentor be a useful tool at all for the board?
It seems quite good against some decks, but like a pretty big miss against others. For instance, it seems good in the same places stony is, but also good against creature combo decks. I'm not sure it's any good vs elves (it might be?), but say vs abzan coco it would shock them every time they try to use viscera seer and effectively neutralize the life gain combo (altho they'd still get to stack their deck). It also works against the new abzan combo for the untap half of devoted druid. Likewise, it neuters knightfall's combo pretty well. Even when they don't combo, it hits their knights, fetches, powerlands, and clues.
@kaz
There has been extensive testing of BW (non eldrazi) both before and during the existence of E&T. I played strangler before temples and displace and TKS were added. There were Bob lists with discard spells that did well just before E&T spiked as well. For something more current, you can also check out Catmix's lingering taxes (or my take on it). It's not that BW is strictly weaker at all. Even just a lighter B splash can unlock quite a lot of powerful options. It's just that we've been testing mono E again since the release of Gideon to understand how and if he fits in the deck. I always like to start with mono E there. For instance, I don't think Gideon fits in my particular version of GW. In fact, I think that Gideon very well may fit nicely into lingering taxes, but I just haven't done extensive testing there yet. Mono W feels quite strong to me atm so I'd like to first understand all the proper proportions of cards there (and I believe I'm quite close to that).
@ninjasonic
I believe kaz meant non eldrazi bw. E&T is very much a known and powerful (albeit inconsistent imo) deck.
@draco
2x Bob in E&T has become fairly stock. He's a real powerhouse.
Mutavault (and other manlands) give us post wrath board prescense, an edge VS affinity (think Mr. Pro all colors), and an out to lili-. Seagate and splicer all that are fine. It's just a different flavor of mono W (which I certainly prefer). Also splicer is good with muta. But yes, copter, canopy, and inspector all help with that same CA problem, but still let me be aggressive with LD (as long as your curve is relatively low to the ground which mine is).
The deck isn't even in the top 24 decks according to MtgGoldfish (mostly online) data, according to what data is it Tier 1 ?
I'd probably classify it as Tier 3.
"Bant Spirits" (in deck creation) sees almost the same play.
If you combine the splashes (even on mtggoldgish), our deck sees about 4% of the meta and that number is on the rise. I believe the current cutoff for tier 1 is 5%, but the meta is skewed with DS decks (again, splashes combined) seeing way more play than any other deck at something like 10-13% depending on where you look at it. Eldrazi tron is sitting at number 2 with around 6%. This actually means we're pretty close to the tier 1, altho I'd still be a bit hesitant to say we're there. Regardless, we are absolutely not tier 3.
@spider: By Eldrazi decks i meant Bant Eldrazi which often play 2 engineered explosives.
Dredge by the way is another deck with a sweeper in conflagrate.
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Wall of text incoming, I tried to explain my thoughts after testing in depth. Please bear with me I'm not able to put my words as eloquent as Spider, Cat or Charons as I'm no native speaker, but I hope you get the point.
My main concerns about Copter still stay, but I changed my view a bit. Since yesterday I had quite a few more games with the 4 Inspector, 2 Copter list. To be honest the sample size to extract information isn't enough for empirical research, especially since Inspector and Copter don't come up every game let alone in combination.
Almost 20 matches should be enough for a new impression. I tried to go into the testing without prejudice.
The first and biggest reason to reject copter for me is that it is still a card needing another creature to enable it. I had two games where my opponents were smart enough to not care about the copter and just remove everything else. Smugglers copter was virtually -1 card. If it had been a real creature the situation would have been different. This may be a fringe situation, but could come up every now and then I imagine
It feels like an equipment saying: 2cmc. Equipped creature becomes 3/3 flyer, whenever it attacks/blocks: loot. Unequips eot. Reading it like that makes me think: why not play a good equipment instead like Sofai or Solas in the first place. Swords become relevant when you need them (which is lategame) and are more game changing because they give an actual good buff to the creature while providing actual card advantage. Swords can't be targeted by creature removal.
Copter led to some awkard opening turns. Like when I had 2 lands and naturally wanted to play taxers first, including thalia. It became clunky. For 3 mana I often had better things to do, like Thalia HC or popping a GQ which made playing Copter even harder. A copter played on T4 and later isn't that helpful/scary anymore.
Copter giving every creature you draw pseudo hasteis truely nice. But I'm still wondering if an actual creature would be better still because it would have been able to attack all the time. Certainly depends on the situation.
The fact that it makes you a bit more resilient against sweepers is true. You don't commit too much to the board as always but you're able to attack the turn afterwards because you don't lose Copter.
Well, after all at least I don't hate Copter anymore. It actually was good sometimes! Never thought I'd say that.
Additional note after I had already written all of this: I had another 10 games against UW control, no Inspectors, 3 Copters and 2 Order of Whiteclay to test the interaction. Must say: I loved it!! Digging for Order and get the selfless loops was game winning every time.
I will definitely go on testing Smuggler's Copter, congratz you convinced me to hold on.
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Inspectors where important for Copters usage. I dumped them a lot when looting, because everything else was more valuable most of the time. Even lands that I needed for Gavony activations.
Usually it was the first card I wanted to side out and it seems logical, but I held on to him for obvious reasons.
Having something to play on turn 1 when you have no vial is nice. Something to vial in at 1 is also very nice. My point, however, is: What are you getting? You get a creature which doesnt block anything profitably and will become blocked by anything except birds/hierarch. You get a clue to replace it later. The bad news is: it costs 2 mana. So you lose tempo it too early. You will not be able to do that before turn 5-6 when your hand is empty. Sometimes You can't play the card you drew because you lack the mana because you TE'd or GQ'd. Inspector adds redundancy to the deck at the cost of speed.
In the end you could just renounce the one drop and play a card that will have more impact without jumping through hoops (like we did for a long time now). OR: play a one drop like hierarch ^^ (Kytheon did not overwhelm me either, but I think he's the 2nd best 1 drop the archetype has to offer.)
The line of play of T1 vial, T2 vial in Inspector, have no two drop, crack clue, get two drop, T3 Vial in two drop is nice. But suboptimal if you compare it to T1 vial, T2 vial in Noble, have no two drop, T3 play 4drop or 3drop+path.
Inspector leads sometimes to hard decisions whether to mulligan or not. An opening hand consisting of (3 lands, vial, resto, path, Inspector) is less a keeper than (3 lands, vial, resto, path, selfless spirit)
Of course I made this up, but you get the point.
In my games I would never flicker the Inspector actively. The value lost is just too high. I use to sandbag Wisp to save something worthwhile. Only when there is no other option and you're back to the wall and need to do something you flicker actively. Here, a card like Splicer/Finks/Rallier/Ewit is just better. Too bad if there's no space for them because Inspector occupies 4 slots in a relatively tight deck.
I think we all agree that the 1/2 body is pretty useless and it is only played because it's arguably the best lategame topdeck because you redraw. It's kind of like a serum visions, but doesn't dig as deep. Comparing it to Serum Visions makes me think of Oath of Nissa immidiatly, which user Ace1 used some time ago. Actually I think Oath is the better 1 drop, as it digs deeper and offers selection, can also be flickered but doesnt cost mana to be activated.
The difference is it pumps Goyf sometimes and Inspector's body, which works with Copter. That brings me back to one of my previous points: Inspector is only viable with Copter.
At this point I want to highlight a different card which really works well with Copter: Fiend Hunter. Yes, right. We all played it to some extend but always decided that it is an unreliable Oblivion Ring which can't attack most of the time and is easier to be removed. Now it can, and it does it perfectly. Definitely a reasonable include and i suggest you try it if you further experiment with copter. Another card which is brought up by you spider (i guess, maybe it was charons or someone else) every once in a while: Order of Whiteclay. That's a thing I'm eager to try out now. Nice synergies with both the crew and looting parts of Copter. Maybe this fills the role of card advantage in mono w and actually works really well with selfless spirit. (Update: I tested it. It's awesome!)
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A list that skips those 6 slots has more steam and is less durdly, therefore faster and more powerful. A very important aspect of D&T: If you give your opponents too much time, they will eventually draw out of your taxing/soft locks.
However, Copter CAN be nice in some situations. I definitively can get behind someone wanting Copter for its looting ability and pseudo haste, but I'll pass on Inspector any day. Sorry to say that: I'm very disappointed by him.
Finally, there are many ways to build D&t and most of them are very reasonable, which is both a curse and a blessing because it's hard to get to "the best list" and something to have next level in-edpth discussion about. A Copter build may very well belong to those lists. Inspector should be avoided and substituted by other value cards (some of which I mentioned in this post).
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Honestly, splash or non splash doesn't affect Gideon. I like a splash on the mana base just to have more utility and punch in lands. The only micro splash making your life a bit easier defending him is blue for the land that makes 1/1 tokens.
Opens you up a bit more to blood moon and makes the burn matchup slightly worse because you deal 2-3 damge to yourself in average per game.
Btw: Going BW micro splash leaves you not only with a lifegain land, but also with lingering souls as value engine and crew for Copter.
Gideon himself left me confused. There were situations where he was useless, could've been just anything else. There were situations where he helped stabilizing me. There seldom were situations where you would just win the game because of him alone. Emblem autowin came up a couple of times when my opponents conceided after I made it, but it was rarely. Gideon is bad when you are behind or when facing a deck going super wide. Gideon is super nice when the oponent is on a deck light on creatures. I found that you want to stare at two creatures maximum, one pinned down, the other one ready to be blocked to death. In this case, however, a walker producing tokens would create the same effect. You chump one creature (aka preventing its damage) and blockkill the other. The difference here is: If the opponent does not want ro risk losing one of his creatures, you get to keep the token, getting you further ahead. As catmix listed some posts above, the +1 can REALLY have an effect. I Remember pinning down a valakut, that was fun. Pinning down Chandra as well. Really unsure what my opinion is about him. I probably don't share the euphoria. For now, Gideon is a fine card to play I guess, but won't push us to the next level of evolution. It's certainly a card you might want if you are facing Wurmcoil Engines and whatnot. What I'm decided about is this though: He is NOT a sideboard card. Either you play him MD and build the deck keeping him in mind, or you don't play him. As a SB Walker, Elspeth or Ally Gideon are better (although they fill another role!). 2-3 is a fine number. When playing 3 I'd suggest to move the 4th Thalia GT to the SB.
This is most likely too much, but playing Gideon with Pact of Negation or Slaughter Pact could be cool. Maybe not in this deck, but maybe
Keep me informed whether you agree or disagree, and most important your recent experience.
Oh. That's fair, although etron sees much more play than bant drazi right now. And dredge is a fair point as well.
No worries. I did not realize you are not a native speaker. Your English seems quite good, so no worries there.
I'm glad to hear that you're warming up to copter. Originally I was going to respond to the inspector results separately, but I think a big thing that's controlling how you view them is connected. Testing them in GW or even a GW microsplash seems to be changing your perspective on the cards and I think at least some of that is actually a cost of the microsplash and not these cards. Let me explain. Even a microsplash for just gavony township alone (you mentioned it alongside stirring wildwood) makes you somewhat more manahungry. If you look at the list Catmix and I were testing, you'll see that we only had 1 4 drop. This better enables us to run 22 lands. Yes, I'm looking to add maybe 1 more resto, but even so. Having this low curve means you get to chuck lands freely and use your LD proactively. While gavony is a phenomenal card, it sounds like running it has made you be looking to use it and having to chuck otherwise more relevant creatures to copter. You have to remember that GW runs hierarch and you're not doing that here which means we have less reliable access to as much mana acceleration. I also think this relates to inspector; obviously hierarch is the better card, but we're not looking at G 1 drops, we're looking at W ones. As a result, I kind of end up reading a lot of what you're saying as, "this is why you should run G," and while I agree that G is a very powerful splash to make, I don't think it's the same conversation we're trying to have here about these white cards.
Less related to G; I think if your opponets are killing your ohter creatures and not copter, then they very well may be making a mistake. If I for instance cast a generic 2 drop to crew cotper, say arbiter, and my opponent bolts/pushes/whatevers arbiter, I still get to crew copter and toss that dead land or vial I was going to draw and cast yet another creatures. The only place where it is not this way is if you topdeck it late game and have no creatures, but I still think it's fine because it will help you get out of that if you find even your worse creature. I will however admit that it will lead to some lines that you might not otherwise make such as holding lands or a change in sequencing in the early game (depending on what you're playing against).
On Gideon; I agree that his is not a SB card, but rather MD or not at all. I agree that he can be bad if you're facing a swarm of creatures and you don't have any of your own. I think he's quite good if we do have some of our own though (see my game vs WB E&T where he pinned down their biggest guy and let me trade favorably with my thalia as he desperately tried to kill it). Against the swarm style decks, he often will only buy you a turn if you're behind, but I'd argue that we don't have many good options there preboard anyway. To be honest, I still need to test him more because I'm still not sure where he's bad, but I can tell you that I overall do like having a cheap planeswalker that my opponents have to spend other some amount of time or at least a couple of cards dealing with. Why just today, I had an opponent bolt my gideon and then helix my gideon to flip a thing in the ice to bounce my board. I then was able to use my bounced flickerwisp off vial to save gideon from the helix and continue to make his only threat useless.
I think the pacts are in interesting idea, but off-color pacts are probably too cute as they'd be literally uncastable unless you had gideon in play. In-color pacts however does intrigue me.
@mightybenno
ah. I guess I just assumed you meant that slot as it seemed the most reasonable card to swap to it. If not that, what were you thinking of replacing? I feel that most of our other cards fill particular roles that are much needed. For instance copter is also 2cmc, but does a different thing (other than that they both fly).
I forgot about tron and their o-stone! good call. However, etron is played much more than regular tron and they don't run ostone. They may run all is dust which selfless does absolutely nothing against. WU control is still played (altho I haven't been running into it as much in league lately, but it should still see higher levels of play) which it makes it a reasonable inclusion. As I said, I would like to find room for it, but I'm not sure just WU control makes me want it as we can and have had to play around sweeper before selfless was a thing for a long time. It's still a great card though and I wouldn't fault you for including it.
I don't like copter in the GW style lists that you and I tend to run (coco). I do think it's good here though. I'm curious that you thought it should be something else. Did you have something in mind in particular?
How did you like gideon in your microsplash?
You are correct in saying that I cannot correlate the success of the deck with those cards in particular and my, catmix's, or your experience with the deck certainly gives us on edge, but I can comment on the power of having a strong curve and how that lower end of the curve manages to avoid its classic problem of being bad in the late game. I can also comment on how good it feels to be able to have any kind of CA in a W deck where we traditionally have very little to none. Digging for a GQ vs tron, or a path vs infect, or whatever it is you need just then can go a long way.
However, I don't mean to beat a dead horse. I'll let you go back and test it again and make your own conclusions.
Catmix mentioned that we had some of the same concerns and I'd like to elaborate on that.
The first thing I'd like to say about this list is this: it looks bad. I mean it. There's 13 noncreature spells in a D&T deck. There's this awful 1 drop (they're all pretty bad in mono W imo). Yet, the deck is putting up results. I'm going to try to explain why it's powerful despite all this, but the best thing you can do for yourself in understanding it is to get out of this whole theory crafting rut and just play the deck. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by cards that you otherwise hated (and might even still hate in any other deck!).
Selfless spirit vs Serra Avenger: Selfless is a card that I like and have been known to run in lots of my lists. Serra is the exact opposite. It's a card that I really do not like. However, in this shell I think it's the better card. Gideon helps push the prison aspect of the deck by pinning dudes down and while he can swing, he often doesn't (unless it's an empty board/ he's about to die) because his +1 is often just much more difficult for the opponent to deal with (deck dependent of course). While selfless helps push this aspect, we also have cards that aren't creatures all the time. Also, I don't think that sweepers are being played very heavily atm. But while selfless can help vs spot removal, it's often the card being killed either way. If it's not furthering my game plan, I'd prefer a big body with a faster clock that can also block. Having a flying clock is quite important for this list.
The 1 drop: I've been off non vial 1 drops for a while in D&T (with the exception of hierarch in GW). So why did I feel that 1 drops were bad? While they all play their own unique role and can be quite good at them, they all have a similar problem; they're bad after turn 4 or so. a t2 vialed in judge's familiar feels great, but it's still a pretty meaningless topdeck late in the game. This is already a problem we have with vial and having more of that problem tends to not be what we want in a nonspecific meta (for instance if my meta was all infect, I'd be playing 4 copies of icatian javelineers because you're never really gonna reach the late game and you need a stronger early game). This is why we play inspector. As much as I hate the card (and believe I really do), it gives us a great curve and it actually is fine in the mid to late game as a topdeck. It's like a creature version of horizon canopy. Having more cyclers like that is actually quite useful. BTW, I run canopy as a 2 of in most of my lists and generally wouldn't leave home without them, but that doesn't mean that I don't want more of this effect to reduce flooding.
smuggler's copter: I'm unsure where you tested copter, but I have found this card to be excellent. It fixes our draws in a deck that can't otherwise doing it (the above cards are also cards to do this, but we generally have problem with CA). I think it does however depend on the shell that you tested it in (as it does with many of the cards in the shell). For instance, I would not play it in my GW coco list, but it's phenomenal in mono W or even in BW if you have room. I'd recommend going back and trying this card. Perhaps it felt bad because you're so used to GW shells where you might not want it?
The microsplash: microsplashes are great. We've seen players do it for pretty much all the different color combinations to get power-lands like you mentioned. My personal favorite tends to be the micro U splash where you get to pay for spellskite (not really relevant right now, but that's beside the point) without paying life and you get moorland to utilize your yard. But that's not really the point. You can absolutely play a splash or a microsplash, but the testing we've been doing for this deck is in mono W jsut to get a feel of the cards before experimenting with it further. You're welcome to take that next step, but I think it'd be good to try these cards in this shell first.
I hope that all makes sense. Again, the best thing you can do is just to try the list. And I'm including inspector and copter in that. You can play around with numbers of things for sure. Catmix has been on 2 gideon, but I was trying 3. He's on brimaz, but I'm on displacer. I'd also like to find room for a 2nd resto. All this is just splitting hairs though.
Good luck with the list! I look forward to hearing back about how it feels for you.
@KO_Bossy Mirran crusader is VERY good right now. I'd run that MD (I haven't seen your list so it might depend). And there's no real comparison between the gideons. Nobody's saying to run one over the other.
Listen to whoever you feel like fits your style the best. Ultimately, you have to decide for yourself. Catmix or I can come at you with huge amounts of data, but that won't change your opinion on a card necessarily. Only you can do that. I think I will say though that if a list has performed well repeatedly, there's likely something to that. A lot of what you will see on here is theory crafting. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can relate back to how you feel about a card. I for instance hate the feel of serra avenger, but does that mean that it's always an awful card?
The best thing you can do for yourself is just to get out there and play and try things and collect data until you know what is good and what feels good for you. Ultimately, there's a balance between the two. I for instance might hate the feel of death's shadow, but that doesn't change the fact that the deck puts up results. I just might not be able to play it. We don't know what feels good for you, so we're just trying to present the data. How you interpret that is up to you.
I think the biggest problem with harsh mentor, is that he does not actually stop opponents from using abilities, and jut damages them which won't stop them getting to wraths, and other important plays needed to stabilize. I'm optimistic that it will still be good enough, but when it comes to fetches, it's not anywhere close to arbiter. I think it shines the most against scooze and kiki combo, but also hits some relevant check marks against knight fall, affinity, and tron. I certainly think it could see play in the right meta.
It always depends on how to approach the matter. It's not necessarily an arbiter replacement, although it could be if you wanted it to. You can play the Mentor alongside Tunnel Ignus and then a fetchland of your opponent becomes a free Thunderous Wrath. Playing red also grants the good ol' Bolt AND Boros Charm, which is a Counterspell against wrath effects (and even 'counters' Verdict). Maybe you don't even want Thalia, Guardian of Thraben in your mainboard, or in the 75. Maybe you just tax in damage. So suddenly, them taking up to 8 damage to wrath (Fetch 1, Mentor +2, untapped Schokland +2, Tunnel Ignus +3) -although in a dream land- is not that bad of a trade as it can basically count as a free combat phase for you. Alternatively, it can cost les dmg but you get another attack step and more chances of playing preemptive answers to a wrath like Selfless Spirit. In this way you don't care them losing lands or not with arbiter, you have reach and can sneak early damage through combat + free damage from opponent's playing magic and finish off a burn spell. Although it's likely that it won't develop exactly like that in many games, I think I make my point. Maybe instead of Arbiter and little thalia you want Simian Spirit Guide and Big Thalia.
I'm not saying go play Harsh Mentor and Tunnel Ignus, and I would certainly never say they can replaces Arbiter or Thalia. Just saying it helps the archetype of WR taxes, and it's likely a key card to beat Tron, Griselbrand reanimator, affinity and coco, while punishing people for playing fetches. When your opponent's life total is 12/14 instead of 20, the amount of games you will lose 1 or 2 turns before winning will decrease significantly. It's just a matter of finding the right configuration and see if the archetype can approach the metagame correctly.
Harsh Mentor may be utter trash, but it doesn't look like that.
EDIT: Card also seems pretty good against Lantern Control.
I'm envisioning a variant of our deck that is tax damage. I'm seeing bolt and eidolon of the great revel alongside tunnel ignus, and harsh mentor. Essentially, your opponent takes a ton of damage for just playing the game. I'm not sure this is better than what we are trying to do now, but it's an avenue to pursue.
Glad to hear it!
That's an excellent point about the prairie. It seems mostly like a slightly worse battlefield forge here. I'm not sure what land could replace it just yet though.
I agree about Ajani. I could see the reach being nice, but I see him being both less versatile and easier to remove.
Excellent points on affinity. In retrospect, I think I'm probably wrong for sideboarding as I did. That's the one place with this deck that I'm not quite 100% on just yet. I had a preconceived notion that if path came in, chalice has to come out and while I think that's very often true, affinity is the perfect place to have both.
You're right that wear//tear is basically just disenchant. It might be harder to cast at times, but I'm viewing it as a wear//tear with a slight upside where we might get the chance to do both modes.
I think we absolutely do want it in the board even if we do have have cast out and nahiri though. It can be used earlier in the game and lets us still have other things to do if it's later on. Being able to EoT blow up that blood moon they cast while not having to have held up 4 mana for something like cast out seems relevant.
I agree about mindcensor VS valakut. It could be decent against tron l and chord decks if we want something more there as well.
I can see pia and kiran being clunky, altho having teach outside of smasher is nice. Chucking an extra chalice at their face does seem good. I may need to test it just as a 1 of and see how it feels.
The GW list is playing a very risky manabase. I understand why dryad arbor can be strong and it's something I have thought about in the past, but that has to be a low removal meta to be decent. Additionally no fetches with rallier and arbor? Only 6 colorless sources for displacer? I understand he did well, but no thank you.
The WB list moves from dangerous to suicide. 20 lands with smasher MD?
It seems to me that they got VERY lucky and knew the meta extremely well.
I played the list some more today (2 leagues on stream if anybody's curious). I tried Redtwister's mana some and found the following: rugged prairie helps a lot for casting anger of the gods, but it can also get you stuck for colored mana. I'm not convinced it's the land we want yet. This happened more when I was on the 2 cavern plan. I switched around the numbers slightly and it feels like we only get 1x cavern/ canopy slot. My twitch chat suggested cutting a gemstone caverns for another cavern of souls, but I think the 3x gemstone is correct.
Nahiri seems totally fine in the board. Another option my chat presented was Ajani Vengeant. Ajani seems better at grinding, but it can't hit opposing blood moons and what not.
I went 0-3 in my first league on stream. I kept some fairly questionable hands that were frankly quite greedy. I feel like this deck pays off greedy plays, but I perhaps went too far. I then adjusted the manabase slightly and played it in another league. I went 5-0 again with it there.
Something to note for the board; I may want to try to find room for an aven mindcensor. I don't know how often we plan on playing against scapeshift, but it might be nice to have more options where we otherwise don't have a whole lot. However, I think our MU there should still be reasonable.
With all this double R mana, how do you all feel about trying to fit a MD pia and kiran nalaar? (it probably replaces a matter reshaper)
I beat traditional jund 2-0, affinity 2-1, grixis DS 2-1, grixis DS 2-0, and esper DS 2-0.
Affinity was by far the hardest match. He ran me over G1. G2 I led with t1 chalice at 0 into t2 stony and he couldn't quite get there. G3 I pretty much turned into removal.deck where I kept on opener with 2 anger and drew into paths. He mulled and so was pretty threat light.
I beat jund with some unfair mana plays involving arbiter.
DS feels quite favored for us. I'm guessing the jund variant might be slightly harder, but all of these felt very manageable.
The deck feels great.
It seems like we are able to splash R and help our bad go-wide MUs at little cost. The only card I could see missing is something like cavern of souls as I think that card is very much needed in the control MUs. It seems that we lost % against something like WU control with all their paths (less basics) and not having cavern for their counters. I'd like to try to squeeze 1 cavern back in somewhere, but I'm having a bit of a hard time seeing where it would fit with the R splash. It might be that we have to pick between the miser
horizon canopy and cavern of souls.
EDIT: I didn't bring nahiri just because I didn't have one. I'm not sure it makes too much of a difference, although I get how she could help us grind. I find it interesting that she plays a similar role as wear/tear, but she's also slower yet more versatile. She's probably worse against something like affinity, but better vs something like RW prison. @Stabil0, can you share your thoughts on the card?
For go wide strategies, my intuition says that ghostly prison should help us quite a bit, but the big problem I see is that we don't have any evasive creatures and so while put opponents may not be able to profitably attack us, we can't really profitably attack them. Relying on just eldrazi displacer with a ton of mana doesn't seem great there.
EDIT: pyroclasm does kill some of our guys, but might be decent. Has anybody tried that?
DOUBLE EDIT: I see that only battlefield forge as a 4x, potentially gemstone caverns and SSG would add R mana currently, so the manabase might have to add a couple more R/W sources to support it. We already can fold pretty hard to blood moon, so maybe we just don't care?
It seems quite good against some decks, but like a pretty big miss against others. For instance, it seems good in the same places stony is, but also good against creature combo decks. I'm not sure it's any good vs elves (it might be?), but say vs abzan coco it would shock them every time they try to use viscera seer and effectively neutralize the life gain combo (altho they'd still get to stack their deck). It also works against the new abzan combo for the untap half of devoted druid. Likewise, it neuters knightfall's combo pretty well. Even when they don't combo, it hits their knights, fetches, powerlands, and clues.
There has been extensive testing of BW (non eldrazi) both before and during the existence of E&T. I played strangler before temples and displace and TKS were added. There were Bob lists with discard spells that did well just before E&T spiked as well. For something more current, you can also check out Catmix's lingering taxes (or my take on it). It's not that BW is strictly weaker at all. Even just a lighter B splash can unlock quite a lot of powerful options. It's just that we've been testing mono E again since the release of Gideon to understand how and if he fits in the deck. I always like to start with mono E there. For instance, I don't think Gideon fits in my particular version of GW. In fact, I think that Gideon very well may fit nicely into lingering taxes, but I just haven't done extensive testing there yet. Mono W feels quite strong to me atm so I'd like to first understand all the proper proportions of cards there (and I believe I'm quite close to that).
@ninjasonic
I believe kaz meant non eldrazi bw. E&T is very much a known and powerful (albeit inconsistent imo) deck.
@draco
2x Bob in E&T has become fairly stock. He's a real powerhouse.
Mutavault (and other manlands) give us post wrath board prescense, an edge VS affinity (think Mr. Pro all colors), and an out to lili-. Seagate and splicer all that are fine. It's just a different flavor of mono W (which I certainly prefer). Also splicer is good with muta. But yes, copter, canopy, and inspector all help with that same CA problem, but still let me be aggressive with LD (as long as your curve is relatively low to the ground which mine is).
If you combine the splashes (even on mtggoldgish), our deck sees about 4% of the meta and that number is on the rise. I believe the current cutoff for tier 1 is 5%, but the meta is skewed with DS decks (again, splashes combined) seeing way more play than any other deck at something like 10-13% depending on where you look at it. Eldrazi tron is sitting at number 2 with around 6%. This actually means we're pretty close to the tier 1, altho I'd still be a bit hesitant to say we're there. Regardless, we are absolutely not tier 3.
Oh. That's fair, although etron sees much more play than bant drazi right now. And dredge is a fair point as well.
No worries. I did not realize you are not a native speaker. Your English seems quite good, so no worries there.
I'm glad to hear that you're warming up to copter. Originally I was going to respond to the inspector results separately, but I think a big thing that's controlling how you view them is connected. Testing them in GW or even a GW microsplash seems to be changing your perspective on the cards and I think at least some of that is actually a cost of the microsplash and not these cards. Let me explain. Even a microsplash for just gavony township alone (you mentioned it alongside stirring wildwood) makes you somewhat more manahungry. If you look at the list Catmix and I were testing, you'll see that we only had 1 4 drop. This better enables us to run 22 lands. Yes, I'm looking to add maybe 1 more resto, but even so. Having this low curve means you get to chuck lands freely and use your LD proactively. While gavony is a phenomenal card, it sounds like running it has made you be looking to use it and having to chuck otherwise more relevant creatures to copter. You have to remember that GW runs hierarch and you're not doing that here which means we have less reliable access to as much mana acceleration. I also think this relates to inspector; obviously hierarch is the better card, but we're not looking at G 1 drops, we're looking at W ones. As a result, I kind of end up reading a lot of what you're saying as, "this is why you should run G," and while I agree that G is a very powerful splash to make, I don't think it's the same conversation we're trying to have here about these white cards.
Less related to G; I think if your opponets are killing your ohter creatures and not copter, then they very well may be making a mistake. If I for instance cast a generic 2 drop to crew cotper, say arbiter, and my opponent bolts/pushes/whatevers arbiter, I still get to crew copter and toss that dead land or vial I was going to draw and cast yet another creatures. The only place where it is not this way is if you topdeck it late game and have no creatures, but I still think it's fine because it will help you get out of that if you find even your worse creature. I will however admit that it will lead to some lines that you might not otherwise make such as holding lands or a change in sequencing in the early game (depending on what you're playing against).
On Gideon; I agree that his is not a SB card, but rather MD or not at all. I agree that he can be bad if you're facing a swarm of creatures and you don't have any of your own. I think he's quite good if we do have some of our own though (see my game vs WB E&T where he pinned down their biggest guy and let me trade favorably with my thalia as he desperately tried to kill it). Against the swarm style decks, he often will only buy you a turn if you're behind, but I'd argue that we don't have many good options there preboard anyway. To be honest, I still need to test him more because I'm still not sure where he's bad, but I can tell you that I overall do like having a cheap planeswalker that my opponents have to spend other some amount of time or at least a couple of cards dealing with. Why just today, I had an opponent bolt my gideon and then helix my gideon to flip a thing in the ice to bounce my board. I then was able to use my bounced flickerwisp off vial to save gideon from the helix and continue to make his only threat useless.
I think the pacts are in interesting idea, but off-color pacts are probably too cute as they'd be literally uncastable unless you had gideon in play. In-color pacts however does intrigue me.
EDIT: sorry for the delayed response.
ah. I guess I just assumed you meant that slot as it seemed the most reasonable card to swap to it. If not that, what were you thinking of replacing? I feel that most of our other cards fill particular roles that are much needed. For instance copter is also 2cmc, but does a different thing (other than that they both fly).
I forgot about tron and their o-stone! good call. However, etron is played much more than regular tron and they don't run ostone. They may run all is dust which selfless does absolutely nothing against. WU control is still played (altho I haven't been running into it as much in league lately, but it should still see higher levels of play) which it makes it a reasonable inclusion. As I said, I would like to find room for it, but I'm not sure just WU control makes me want it as we can and have had to play around sweeper before selfless was a thing for a long time. It's still a great card though and I wouldn't fault you for including it.
I don't like copter in the GW style lists that you and I tend to run (coco). I do think it's good here though. I'm curious that you thought it should be something else. Did you have something in mind in particular?
How did you like gideon in your microsplash?
You are correct in saying that I cannot correlate the success of the deck with those cards in particular and my, catmix's, or your experience with the deck certainly gives us on edge, but I can comment on the power of having a strong curve and how that lower end of the curve manages to avoid its classic problem of being bad in the late game. I can also comment on how good it feels to be able to have any kind of CA in a W deck where we traditionally have very little to none. Digging for a GQ vs tron, or a path vs infect, or whatever it is you need just then can go a long way.
However, I don't mean to beat a dead horse. I'll let you go back and test it again and make your own conclusions.
Catmix mentioned that we had some of the same concerns and I'd like to elaborate on that.
The first thing I'd like to say about this list is this: it looks bad. I mean it. There's 13 noncreature spells in a D&T deck. There's this awful 1 drop (they're all pretty bad in mono W imo). Yet, the deck is putting up results. I'm going to try to explain why it's powerful despite all this, but the best thing you can do for yourself in understanding it is to get out of this whole theory crafting rut and just play the deck. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by cards that you otherwise hated (and might even still hate in any other deck!).
Selfless spirit vs Serra Avenger: Selfless is a card that I like and have been known to run in lots of my lists. Serra is the exact opposite. It's a card that I really do not like. However, in this shell I think it's the better card. Gideon helps push the prison aspect of the deck by pinning dudes down and while he can swing, he often doesn't (unless it's an empty board/ he's about to die) because his +1 is often just much more difficult for the opponent to deal with (deck dependent of course). While selfless helps push this aspect, we also have cards that aren't creatures all the time. Also, I don't think that sweepers are being played very heavily atm. But while selfless can help vs spot removal, it's often the card being killed either way. If it's not furthering my game plan, I'd prefer a big body with a faster clock that can also block. Having a flying clock is quite important for this list.
The 1 drop: I've been off non vial 1 drops for a while in D&T (with the exception of hierarch in GW). So why did I feel that 1 drops were bad? While they all play their own unique role and can be quite good at them, they all have a similar problem; they're bad after turn 4 or so. a t2 vialed in judge's familiar feels great, but it's still a pretty meaningless topdeck late in the game. This is already a problem we have with vial and having more of that problem tends to not be what we want in a nonspecific meta (for instance if my meta was all infect, I'd be playing 4 copies of icatian javelineers because you're never really gonna reach the late game and you need a stronger early game). This is why we play inspector. As much as I hate the card (and believe I really do), it gives us a great curve and it actually is fine in the mid to late game as a topdeck. It's like a creature version of horizon canopy. Having more cyclers like that is actually quite useful. BTW, I run canopy as a 2 of in most of my lists and generally wouldn't leave home without them, but that doesn't mean that I don't want more of this effect to reduce flooding.
smuggler's copter: I'm unsure where you tested copter, but I have found this card to be excellent. It fixes our draws in a deck that can't otherwise doing it (the above cards are also cards to do this, but we generally have problem with CA). I think it does however depend on the shell that you tested it in (as it does with many of the cards in the shell). For instance, I would not play it in my GW coco list, but it's phenomenal in mono W or even in BW if you have room. I'd recommend going back and trying this card. Perhaps it felt bad because you're so used to GW shells where you might not want it?
The microsplash: microsplashes are great. We've seen players do it for pretty much all the different color combinations to get power-lands like you mentioned. My personal favorite tends to be the micro U splash where you get to pay for spellskite (not really relevant right now, but that's beside the point) without paying life and you get moorland to utilize your yard. But that's not really the point. You can absolutely play a splash or a microsplash, but the testing we've been doing for this deck is in mono W jsut to get a feel of the cards before experimenting with it further. You're welcome to take that next step, but I think it'd be good to try these cards in this shell first.
I hope that all makes sense. Again, the best thing you can do is just to try the list. And I'm including inspector and copter in that. You can play around with numbers of things for sure. Catmix has been on 2 gideon, but I was trying 3. He's on brimaz, but I'm on displacer. I'd also like to find room for a 2nd resto. All this is just splitting hairs though.
Good luck with the list! I look forward to hearing back about how it feels for you.
@KO_Bossy
Mirran crusader is VERY good right now. I'd run that MD (I haven't seen your list so it might depend). And there's no real comparison between the gideons. Nobody's saying to run one over the other.
Listen to whoever you feel like fits your style the best. Ultimately, you have to decide for yourself. Catmix or I can come at you with huge amounts of data, but that won't change your opinion on a card necessarily. Only you can do that. I think I will say though that if a list has performed well repeatedly, there's likely something to that. A lot of what you will see on here is theory crafting. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can relate back to how you feel about a card. I for instance hate the feel of serra avenger, but does that mean that it's always an awful card?
The best thing you can do for yourself is just to get out there and play and try things and collect data until you know what is good and what feels good for you. Ultimately, there's a balance between the two. I for instance might hate the feel of death's shadow, but that doesn't change the fact that the deck puts up results. I just might not be able to play it. We don't know what feels good for you, so we're just trying to present the data. How you interpret that is up to you.
I'm envisioning a variant of our deck that is tax damage. I'm seeing bolt and eidolon of the great revel alongside tunnel ignus, and harsh mentor. Essentially, your opponent takes a ton of damage for just playing the game. I'm not sure this is better than what we are trying to do now, but it's an avenue to pursue.