Question is basically contained in the header: I recently moved to Pittsburgh from Ann Arbor, MI; which has a pretty big Type 1.5 scene with weekly tournaments at a couple of stores.
The only place I've found so far with some online searching is Mr. Nice Guy in Oakmont, which hosts monthly tourneys with reportedly spotty attendance. Are there any other residents of the Burgh here who can point me to additional venues and tournaments, or is 1.5 basically dead in this city?
All I can say in closing on this is that Mana Leak going is fine, 2 years is a fair run and all that I expected. But the fact that it is seen by some people as the problem in the environment and not Delver is very, very reminiscent of the mistakes made in the past where support cards are singled-out for removal or punishment when the actual culprits are allowed to rampage unscathed.
In the distant past cards like Hymn to Tourach and Hypnotic Specter were seen as the problem and allowed to rotate even as Necropotence stayed in print. Call me crazy, but Delver seems like an obvious modern parallel, and unless something drastic changes, I don't see blue-based tempo decks going anywhere until Innistrad block rotates because blue is always going to have cheap bounce, a 1U guy to recycle it, and a 1 drop that is worth protecting as long as that block stays in Type II.
It is fair for a counterspell to be 'better removal', because it is 'removal that can only be cast at one specific time'.
Also agree with this.
There is a reason why good counters have to be reasonably costed and reasonably versatile, it's because they have such a limited time frame in which they can be used, and because that time frame leaves windows of opportunity for the opponent that removal generally doesn't.
I know most players realize this, but I sometimes wonder when people are conflating Counterspell with Vindicate and Doom Blade directly rather than noting the contextual nature of counter-magic and its role in reining in the CIP abilities of creatures like Primeval Titan (i.e.: keeping the deck from being oppressive in the environment). It's a versatile tool, but it doesn't do anything about resolved threats and even traditional Cuneo Draw-Go from the MirVLight / Tempest era with 24 counters including Counterspell itself, including Forbid, could still lose plenty of matches due to being over-run with threats. If Delver of Secrets existed in that format? Well, I don't think any other deck would have been playable, I'll put it that way.
The problem with the current Standard, however, is that one of the best aggressive creatures is in the same color as Mana Leak...
This would be my case in point. Mana Leak is a fine spell, does the Delver deck exist without Delver itself though? You could still play it as a pseudo-Caw Blade deck using spirits, but lacking the 1 drop it would be much less likely to get a board state that it could defend to begin with.
Why is Mana Leak so good in that deck? Because you can cast your threat on turn 1 and then defend it on turn 2 with Leak, often for the next several turns. In many cases you do not have to resolve another spell.
Traditional control decks that used Mana Leak or hard counters do not have that sort of luxury. Mana Leak was an OK card in the past, but it certainly wasn't seen as a staple, and it certainly wasn't oppressive. It's oppressive when turn 1 threats are sufficient to win the game or present a nearly inevitable board state by the time Leak stops being useful.
FWIW, I have no problem with Leak rotating. I don't like the Delver deck, I'm fine with it being hosed, but the suggestion that removing the general utility of counter-magic from the game is the best solution to that? Let's just say that they had better not have anything approaching Titan-level power in the next few sets, as they are going to be oppressive enough as it is in the new Standard, likely joined by a Bounce and Tap Down heavier version of Delver or Spirits.
Any suggestion in the linked article that UB Control is by any means close to oppressive right now makes me extremely pessimistic about the direction the game is headed in for the next couple of years though. UB is a playable deck, but it isn't all that hot against Delver and basically plays best in an environment where Ramp or Combo is prevalent. It has a good game against Zombies, as the only thing you really have to worry about is Messenger. It is OK at best against Humans. Given the new land is going to make both Humans and Zombies better against the deck, I don't see it surviving as is, and Battle Cruiser Solar Flare "Control" decks are not a decent replacement; they're essentially the same as Frites and Wolf Run, all of them are just decks dedicated to powering out ridiculous fat as fast as humanly possible.
As Leak goes, I'm fine with it leaving. I was originally hoping that Wizards would print a UU Counter that would require more of a single colour commitment to punish the Tempo builds that are making best use of Leak (i.e.: the fact Humans can splash it, &c.) but now I'm not convinced that it's going to make any difference. Hard counters were traditional U-based control's one answer to the nutty creature-based stuff like Undying and Hexproof that have been running amok lately. Now not even being able to reliably have the option to counter creatures in many cases will mean that even Counterspell itself would be situational in a not-insignificant number of situations.
Reprinting Remand or worse, Memory Lapse would only repeat the same mistakes, all are counters that make Tempo decks better, not actual control decks. Aside from that, on the latter point, I have to imagine that most people haven't actually played with Lapse and don't realize how ridiculously oppressive it would be with Snapcaster. During Planar Chaos they originally considered reprinting it as a white colour shift but opted not to as they realized how ridiculously good it still was; and that was in an environment without Snapcaster.
Tamiyo is an interesting card. In a U/W Shell that doesn't use creatures, like the Cuneo style decks that win with Blue Sun's, she's a viable option as a 2-of to lock down cards and to force the opponent to commit to the board more. Yes, she only costs 1 less than a Titan, but she has the benefit of not being a creature.
Playing that type of deck, the main place I've found my deck running into trouble is when I keep controlling the board, keep controlling the board, and they're finally able to roll one more thing out. If you have Tamiyo in that deck, you can force them to commit more, getting more value for your sweeps, and you can also, if you keep them locked with it, eventually ultimate, at which point they should be scooping.
The problem, really, the main problem with this is the ungodly number of Hexproof creatures that are tournament playable right now. That doesn't make her bad, control decks will still have non-targeting sweep, but...
Quite honestly, it amuses me that people think Icy Manipulator wouldn't still be good right now. If it was legal I would almost assuredly play some in that UW control deck. The extra mana cost and vulnerability of a planeswalker body isn't inconsequential, but she's certainly worth some slots in U-based control decks.
I do think she could have some utility in a blue aggro / tap-down your stuff deck as well. There are enough effects now to make this deck at least worth a second look. The fact that a more aggro shell would make her second ability relevant is worth looking at.
Granted, she's not the stone cold nuts, which is what people seem to expect out of all planeswalkers these days, but she's definitely going to see play, and very probably, in more than one archetype.
There's an additional context that I brought up a couple of pages ago but that I don't think people have grappled with yet though: the more blind card drawing you run the worse this card is.
Ponder is OK with it, if you find it in the three, then you can set it up for pure upside. You can blind draw it on the shuffle, but it's at least reasonable.
Any card drawing beyond that though? The chances of running into it that way would make it nigh unplayable.
So here's my thing, unless Delver decides to start using this in place of stuff like Gitaxian Probe, which is free, or Thought Scour, which increases the damage of the Pike and creates additional options for Snapcaster Mage and Haunt, then I don't see it in that deck.
OK, what other decks exist in blue?
Control...uses a lot of card drawing.
Zombies...sure, 1-2 copies. But that's only if blue continues to end up being the splash colour of choice for the deck, which I'm skeptical of.
Humans with a blue splash, OK, this is reasonable. I could see running a 1-2 copies in that deck.
Unless some sort of U/X Aggro deck comes out of the new stuff that AR offers, then I just don't see where the card has a comfortable home and certainly not in quantities that will actually make it worth any significant amount of money. Drawing cards is not something that blue mages tend to eschew, and the card punishes you for doing that.
Temporal Mastery isn't a bad looking card, but I think there is a bit of a gap here between people who have actually played extensively with Time Walk and those who haven't.
Sure, for the first couple of turns these cards are functionally identical, but there are scenarios that you can set up with Time Walk that you simply can't with TM:
- You turn the cards sideways, and your opponent makes blocks or cast spells assuming that they can Wrath / make a blocker / whatever next turn, Surprise! Time Walk! &c.
- You have 6 mana in play. You have two 4 mana threats in hand and a Time Walk. You bait a counter on the weaker first spell (possibly something the opponent wouldn't have cared enough to stop given more information), Time Walk, and then are able to resolve the other one on your extra turn.
Basically, Time Walk gains value from being hidden information, and from the fact that you can use when it's optimum for you. Temporal Mastery still gives you that extra turn, but the reveal and cast has to happen first, and you have to take that extra turn NOW, which means in game terms, though they seem to do the same thing, TM is still much weaker than Time Walk, even when you're getting it for the 1U.
Aside from that, extra turns for 1U are never a bad thing per se, but extra turns for 5UU are almost never going to be worth it. That means this is a card that actually gets worse in quantity without a shuffle away / deck stacker because you're more and more likely to have it in your initial grip. I could see playing a miser's copy, maybe 2 on the outside. More than that without Brainstorm in your deck does not strike me as particularly wise unless you're a savage deck stacker, as you're going to have a lot of hands with blanks in them.
You can use it with Ponder, but that can also lead to "living the nightmare" scenarios where you shuffle your deck and end up peeling it on the draw. It doesn't seem all that hot in a deck with Gitaxian Probe for the same reason: more draws means more chances to be stuck with dead weight. Basically, any deck with any decent quanitity of extra draws is never going to want to use this. A deck with ONLY Ponder might get away with it, but it still could lead to dicey scenarios if you used more than a couple. A deck with ONLY Brainstorm of JTMS would not have these problems, and in that deck only I could see using more of them.
Why do you think Garruk Relentless is better than Birthing Pod in a deck of this sort?
I ask because for much of the season I was playing a Simic Pod deck that began with 2 Garruk Relentless that were eventually evicted for more Swords of War and Peace.
My basic problem with Garruk is that almost every time I drew him he ended up being the last thing I actually wanted to play. In some situations you want to use him as a 4 mana Lightning Bolt, and on rare occasions you can get some significant board advantage by having him spit out Wolf tokens, but for the most part he ends up serving as a Bolt and a partial Fog for 4. That's not terrible, but it's doesn't dominate the board the way an active Birthing Pod does.
Birthing Pod in any deck with undying creatures like Strangleroot, Vorapede, Clones of those, can gain a significant board advantage by using Pod. Pod also makes a Blade Splicer with a Vapor Snagged Golem less than a complete pile; I still don't like it with that card so rampant in the environment, but it's at least playable with Pod as a side use. Pod also joins Gavony Township in a deck like this in giving you a non-spell mana outlet for turns when you want to just flip Huntmaster. I guess I'd need to see some hard, line-by-line thoughts on why Garruk beats that out. I'm all for the Sword plan, Swords with mana dorks and Strangleroot can make for quick blow-outs; but Garruk over Pod?
When does the Metamorph come back into play? Does the creature I searched for come into play first, and then the Metamorph comes back (potentially copying it) or does the Undying trigger resolve first?
The R/G lists are very strong in my testing, and I've been working on it since the initial DKA spoilers came out. There are definitely enough tools there to make it work, it's really just a matter of tuning the numbers and the last 4-6 slots.
It's interesting, and admittedly a bit disappointing to see so many pros piloting modified Wolf Run and Delver decks. I know that DKA is a small set, but it would have been nice to see some more crazy stuff like the Heartless Summoning decks making an appearance.
I'm a bit surprised that Delver is being played as much as it, quite honestly, it's still a good deck, but it's not as great against Green decks that run a legion of hexproof guys, or even against the more aggro decks that can jam threats like R/G (haste being very relevant as a trump to Snag...Zombies, if it were a deck, would obviously not like the Vapor Snag treatment on their comes into play tapped guys...at all).
It seems like the version of Wolf Run that ChannelFireball is playing should have a good match against the more aggro decks in the meta, but that they still have vulnerability to the Delver builds, perhaps more than ever since the Delver decks are running Faceless Butcher...I mean Dungeon Geists. Sure, if they have Elesh Norn and can get it out, then they wipe the board, but it's kind of difficult to get 7 mana spells through Mana Leak, as was obvious in the feature match with Conley Woods yesterday.
Splinter Twin isn't a high performing card though and you can still pull counters and cantrips from their hand to neuter their ability to get the combo or deal with your creature removal
I'll put it this way, if I look at their hand and see a combo piece and search, I'll take the combo piece any day if I have the option. The search represents a possible 1/2 of the combo, the combo piece represents...certainty. In some cases it makes sense to hit the search, if they have two copies of one half of the combo for instance, but if they only have one combo chunk, then I most definitely want to take it and let them do the work of trying to re-find both pieces.
Again, this is going to depend on your meta, but I assume that most of the people interested in Modern are interested because they're playing in PTQs. Splinter Twin is one of the beasts of the current meta. If you want the best chance to take home the blue envelope you'd better have a good game against that deck.
I s'pose you have to balance that against the life loss in the sense that you end up being weaker against the currently popular Red Affinity (you can hit all of Affinity's cards with Inquisition) as well though. So I'd look and see your odds and see which match you want to shore up more. Losing life against Affinity makes it easier for them to burn you out quickly, not having the ability to strip the cards you want from Splinter Twin can be very relevant and weaken that match though, and, personally, I'm more afraid of the instant-win combo currently.
On the main topic, it's not really a choice that needs to be made independently of the type of deck you're playing. In general aggressive decks are better off using discard if they can use it because they can keep the tempo up and not have to sit back on the mana for multiple turns. That said, if your mana base doesn't support it, counters can also do the trick. In general, counters are much better in control decks for a reason, they're slower and more reactive. Decks that try to lay out a threat before turn 7 or so are usually better off using discard if they can support it, provided of course that the discard is actually good enough to be worth using.
As for IoK vs Thoughtseize, the majority of the important cards in the meta can be pulled with IoK. There have been numerous debates on this topic. That being said, no discard is as flexible as Thoughtseize. Most discard runs both.
The majority of the important cards...aside from two cards that make up half of the Splinter Twin combo, Splinter Twin itself and Kiki Jiki. You can ignore that deck at your peril, but I would be very afraid of it and expect to see it at the top tables at any serious Modern event right now. Because of this if I was making a call between the two cards in the current meta I would most definitely bias in favour of Thoughtseize as being able to force the Splinter Twin player to discard the cards you want them to can be very relevant. Sometimes you're just going to want the Pestermite, but if you Inquisition and are looking at a hand with only Kiki Jiki or ST as opposed to Exarch and Pestimite, then you're not going to be happy. Twin players routinely keep hands with only half of the combo and plan to dig for the other half, if you nab that card they were counting on, then you can slow them down a lot.
All this card does is crush fun. Burning Vengeance deck? Not anymore. Birthing Pod? The number of fun decks that this makes completely unviable is enormous.
These seem like the only two decks from the current Standard meta that this spell does much to, at least enough to justify giving SB slots to this card for. Neither of them were tier 1 before it was printed. Maybe they would have had enough new toys post-DKA to be competitive, but that's conjecture. I suppose that some of the U/W decks that do Sun Titan / Phantasmal Image tricks could be sad pandas with it in play, but that deck doesn't HAVE to have that trick to work and could easily board into more of an alternate win condition like WSZ. I wouldn't call that an enormous impact, it's more like a continuation of status quo. Some of the crazy decks people have been talking about like Grimgrin control are hated out pre-emptively, but again, was that deck ever going to be tier 1? I'm not sold on that.
I do like this for Legacy as a threat in my Affinity deck because it's an artifact that sticks around and powers up my Cranial Plating, but I think people are over-estimating how many of these things are going to be hanging around Standard and what sort of impact they'll have. It's far from a "play it or lose" card for most decks and if it becomes common, decks will evolve to mitigate its effect.
Actually most Snapcaster based decks won't even care they will just chuckle and let you play your cage.
Unless they are holding like 3+ Snapcasters in hand and the card really would annoy them.
Decks that have a lot of graveyard manipulation care but this card basically does nothing against Delver.
I don't disagree at all, and again, I like Snappy, he's a useful card, but if for whatever reason the Cage became a common SB option against the Pike deck, then you could easily swap him out for either more bounce, more counters, or more creatures depending on the opponent. I was thinking along the same lines as you when I was writing my original post up above, if I'm sitting with Snapcaster and Leak in hand and someone lays a Cage I don't think I'm going to bother Leaking. You would be down 1U and the Leak and then need to spend 2UU to cast Snappy and re-use the Leak from the yard. Why not just keep the original Leak and keep back Snappy as an EoT blocker/attacker? Again, if you're playing him a control deck that is flashing back Day of Judgment, then sure, I could see wanting to stop a Cage in a few more situations, but most of the time the Snapcaster just isn't central enough to a deck's strategy to make wasting a counter on a Cage worthwhile.
Again, FWIW, I also don't see how this card has already reached the price level that it's at, it's simply unsustainable. This is a normal rare card in a small set that is about to be drafted heavily. The card itself is great for what it does, but again, I think most people are going to realize that you don't even need to run it, its existence in the meta will mean that you can easily cheat and rarely be punished for it.
very narrow indeed in only shuts down like half of innistrad playable cards.
You need to take my quote in context. It's narrow in the sense that it only turns off a handful of cards in most of the competitive decks in the current Standard meta. That means that it won't be worth putting in against them. Yes, it shuts off some strategies like Pod, Burning Vengeance that looked like they were going to get more toys out of the new set, but it's not going to be put in to shut down just opposing Snapcasters or just opposing GSZ, it's just a 1-1 at that point, and not against the cards that actively make those decks work and kill you.
The only place I've found so far with some online searching is Mr. Nice Guy in Oakmont, which hosts monthly tourneys with reportedly spotty attendance. Are there any other residents of the Burgh here who can point me to additional venues and tournaments, or is 1.5 basically dead in this city?
In the distant past cards like Hymn to Tourach and Hypnotic Specter were seen as the problem and allowed to rotate even as Necropotence stayed in print. Call me crazy, but Delver seems like an obvious modern parallel, and unless something drastic changes, I don't see blue-based tempo decks going anywhere until Innistrad block rotates because blue is always going to have cheap bounce, a 1U guy to recycle it, and a 1 drop that is worth protecting as long as that block stays in Type II.
Also agree with this.
There is a reason why good counters have to be reasonably costed and reasonably versatile, it's because they have such a limited time frame in which they can be used, and because that time frame leaves windows of opportunity for the opponent that removal generally doesn't.
I know most players realize this, but I sometimes wonder when people are conflating Counterspell with Vindicate and Doom Blade directly rather than noting the contextual nature of counter-magic and its role in reining in the CIP abilities of creatures like Primeval Titan (i.e.: keeping the deck from being oppressive in the environment). It's a versatile tool, but it doesn't do anything about resolved threats and even traditional Cuneo Draw-Go from the MirVLight / Tempest era with 24 counters including Counterspell itself, including Forbid, could still lose plenty of matches due to being over-run with threats. If Delver of Secrets existed in that format? Well, I don't think any other deck would have been playable, I'll put it that way.
This would be my case in point. Mana Leak is a fine spell, does the Delver deck exist without Delver itself though? You could still play it as a pseudo-Caw Blade deck using spirits, but lacking the 1 drop it would be much less likely to get a board state that it could defend to begin with.
Why is Mana Leak so good in that deck? Because you can cast your threat on turn 1 and then defend it on turn 2 with Leak, often for the next several turns. In many cases you do not have to resolve another spell.
Traditional control decks that used Mana Leak or hard counters do not have that sort of luxury. Mana Leak was an OK card in the past, but it certainly wasn't seen as a staple, and it certainly wasn't oppressive. It's oppressive when turn 1 threats are sufficient to win the game or present a nearly inevitable board state by the time Leak stops being useful.
FWIW, I have no problem with Leak rotating. I don't like the Delver deck, I'm fine with it being hosed, but the suggestion that removing the general utility of counter-magic from the game is the best solution to that? Let's just say that they had better not have anything approaching Titan-level power in the next few sets, as they are going to be oppressive enough as it is in the new Standard, likely joined by a Bounce and Tap Down heavier version of Delver or Spirits.
Any suggestion in the linked article that UB Control is by any means close to oppressive right now makes me extremely pessimistic about the direction the game is headed in for the next couple of years though. UB is a playable deck, but it isn't all that hot against Delver and basically plays best in an environment where Ramp or Combo is prevalent. It has a good game against Zombies, as the only thing you really have to worry about is Messenger. It is OK at best against Humans. Given the new land is going to make both Humans and Zombies better against the deck, I don't see it surviving as is, and Battle Cruiser Solar Flare "Control" decks are not a decent replacement; they're essentially the same as Frites and Wolf Run, all of them are just decks dedicated to powering out ridiculous fat as fast as humanly possible.
As Leak goes, I'm fine with it leaving. I was originally hoping that Wizards would print a UU Counter that would require more of a single colour commitment to punish the Tempo builds that are making best use of Leak (i.e.: the fact Humans can splash it, &c.) but now I'm not convinced that it's going to make any difference. Hard counters were traditional U-based control's one answer to the nutty creature-based stuff like Undying and Hexproof that have been running amok lately. Now not even being able to reliably have the option to counter creatures in many cases will mean that even Counterspell itself would be situational in a not-insignificant number of situations.
Reprinting Remand or worse, Memory Lapse would only repeat the same mistakes, all are counters that make Tempo decks better, not actual control decks. Aside from that, on the latter point, I have to imagine that most people haven't actually played with Lapse and don't realize how ridiculously oppressive it would be with Snapcaster. During Planar Chaos they originally considered reprinting it as a white colour shift but opted not to as they realized how ridiculously good it still was; and that was in an environment without Snapcaster.
Playing that type of deck, the main place I've found my deck running into trouble is when I keep controlling the board, keep controlling the board, and they're finally able to roll one more thing out. If you have Tamiyo in that deck, you can force them to commit more, getting more value for your sweeps, and you can also, if you keep them locked with it, eventually ultimate, at which point they should be scooping.
The problem, really, the main problem with this is the ungodly number of Hexproof creatures that are tournament playable right now. That doesn't make her bad, control decks will still have non-targeting sweep, but...
Quite honestly, it amuses me that people think Icy Manipulator wouldn't still be good right now. If it was legal I would almost assuredly play some in that UW control deck. The extra mana cost and vulnerability of a planeswalker body isn't inconsequential, but she's certainly worth some slots in U-based control decks.
I do think she could have some utility in a blue aggro / tap-down your stuff deck as well. There are enough effects now to make this deck at least worth a second look. The fact that a more aggro shell would make her second ability relevant is worth looking at.
Granted, she's not the stone cold nuts, which is what people seem to expect out of all planeswalkers these days, but she's definitely going to see play, and very probably, in more than one archetype.
Ponder is OK with it, if you find it in the three, then you can set it up for pure upside. You can blind draw it on the shuffle, but it's at least reasonable.
Any card drawing beyond that though? The chances of running into it that way would make it nigh unplayable.
So here's my thing, unless Delver decides to start using this in place of stuff like Gitaxian Probe, which is free, or Thought Scour, which increases the damage of the Pike and creates additional options for Snapcaster Mage and Haunt, then I don't see it in that deck.
OK, what other decks exist in blue?
Control...uses a lot of card drawing.
Zombies...sure, 1-2 copies. But that's only if blue continues to end up being the splash colour of choice for the deck, which I'm skeptical of.
Humans with a blue splash, OK, this is reasonable. I could see running a 1-2 copies in that deck.
Unless some sort of U/X Aggro deck comes out of the new stuff that AR offers, then I just don't see where the card has a comfortable home and certainly not in quantities that will actually make it worth any significant amount of money. Drawing cards is not something that blue mages tend to eschew, and the card punishes you for doing that.
Sure, for the first couple of turns these cards are functionally identical, but there are scenarios that you can set up with Time Walk that you simply can't with TM:
- You turn the cards sideways, and your opponent makes blocks or cast spells assuming that they can Wrath / make a blocker / whatever next turn, Surprise! Time Walk! &c.
- You have 6 mana in play. You have two 4 mana threats in hand and a Time Walk. You bait a counter on the weaker first spell (possibly something the opponent wouldn't have cared enough to stop given more information), Time Walk, and then are able to resolve the other one on your extra turn.
Basically, Time Walk gains value from being hidden information, and from the fact that you can use when it's optimum for you. Temporal Mastery still gives you that extra turn, but the reveal and cast has to happen first, and you have to take that extra turn NOW, which means in game terms, though they seem to do the same thing, TM is still much weaker than Time Walk, even when you're getting it for the 1U.
Aside from that, extra turns for 1U are never a bad thing per se, but extra turns for 5UU are almost never going to be worth it. That means this is a card that actually gets worse in quantity without a shuffle away / deck stacker because you're more and more likely to have it in your initial grip. I could see playing a miser's copy, maybe 2 on the outside. More than that without Brainstorm in your deck does not strike me as particularly wise unless you're a savage deck stacker, as you're going to have a lot of hands with blanks in them.
You can use it with Ponder, but that can also lead to "living the nightmare" scenarios where you shuffle your deck and end up peeling it on the draw. It doesn't seem all that hot in a deck with Gitaxian Probe for the same reason: more draws means more chances to be stuck with dead weight. Basically, any deck with any decent quanitity of extra draws is never going to want to use this. A deck with ONLY Ponder might get away with it, but it still could lead to dicey scenarios if you used more than a couple. A deck with ONLY Brainstorm of JTMS would not have these problems, and in that deck only I could see using more of them.
Why do you think Garruk Relentless is better than Birthing Pod in a deck of this sort?
I ask because for much of the season I was playing a Simic Pod deck that began with 2 Garruk Relentless that were eventually evicted for more Swords of War and Peace.
My basic problem with Garruk is that almost every time I drew him he ended up being the last thing I actually wanted to play. In some situations you want to use him as a 4 mana Lightning Bolt, and on rare occasions you can get some significant board advantage by having him spit out Wolf tokens, but for the most part he ends up serving as a Bolt and a partial Fog for 4. That's not terrible, but it's doesn't dominate the board the way an active Birthing Pod does.
Birthing Pod in any deck with undying creatures like Strangleroot, Vorapede, Clones of those, can gain a significant board advantage by using Pod. Pod also makes a Blade Splicer with a Vapor Snagged Golem less than a complete pile; I still don't like it with that card so rampant in the environment, but it's at least playable with Pod as a side use. Pod also joins Gavony Township in a deck like this in giving you a non-spell mana outlet for turns when you want to just flip Huntmaster. I guess I'd need to see some hard, line-by-line thoughts on why Garruk beats that out. I'm all for the Sword plan, Swords with mana dorks and Strangleroot can make for quick blow-outs; but Garruk over Pod?
When does the Metamorph come back into play? Does the creature I searched for come into play first, and then the Metamorph comes back (potentially copying it) or does the Undying trigger resolve first?
It's interesting, and admittedly a bit disappointing to see so many pros piloting modified Wolf Run and Delver decks. I know that DKA is a small set, but it would have been nice to see some more crazy stuff like the Heartless Summoning decks making an appearance.
I'm a bit surprised that Delver is being played as much as it, quite honestly, it's still a good deck, but it's not as great against Green decks that run a legion of hexproof guys, or even against the more aggro decks that can jam threats like R/G (haste being very relevant as a trump to Snag...Zombies, if it were a deck, would obviously not like the Vapor Snag treatment on their comes into play tapped guys...at all).
It seems like the version of Wolf Run that ChannelFireball is playing should have a good match against the more aggro decks in the meta, but that they still have vulnerability to the Delver builds, perhaps more than ever since the Delver decks are running Faceless Butcher...I mean Dungeon Geists. Sure, if they have Elesh Norn and can get it out, then they wipe the board, but it's kind of difficult to get 7 mana spells through Mana Leak, as was obvious in the feature match with Conley Woods yesterday.
I'll put it this way, if I look at their hand and see a combo piece and search, I'll take the combo piece any day if I have the option. The search represents a possible 1/2 of the combo, the combo piece represents...certainty. In some cases it makes sense to hit the search, if they have two copies of one half of the combo for instance, but if they only have one combo chunk, then I most definitely want to take it and let them do the work of trying to re-find both pieces.
Again, this is going to depend on your meta, but I assume that most of the people interested in Modern are interested because they're playing in PTQs. Splinter Twin is one of the beasts of the current meta. If you want the best chance to take home the blue envelope you'd better have a good game against that deck.
I s'pose you have to balance that against the life loss in the sense that you end up being weaker against the currently popular Red Affinity (you can hit all of Affinity's cards with Inquisition) as well though. So I'd look and see your odds and see which match you want to shore up more. Losing life against Affinity makes it easier for them to burn you out quickly, not having the ability to strip the cards you want from Splinter Twin can be very relevant and weaken that match though, and, personally, I'm more afraid of the instant-win combo currently.
The majority of the important cards...aside from two cards that make up half of the Splinter Twin combo, Splinter Twin itself and Kiki Jiki. You can ignore that deck at your peril, but I would be very afraid of it and expect to see it at the top tables at any serious Modern event right now. Because of this if I was making a call between the two cards in the current meta I would most definitely bias in favour of Thoughtseize as being able to force the Splinter Twin player to discard the cards you want them to can be very relevant. Sometimes you're just going to want the Pestermite, but if you Inquisition and are looking at a hand with only Kiki Jiki or ST as opposed to Exarch and Pestimite, then you're not going to be happy. Twin players routinely keep hands with only half of the combo and plan to dig for the other half, if you nab that card they were counting on, then you can slow them down a lot.
These seem like the only two decks from the current Standard meta that this spell does much to, at least enough to justify giving SB slots to this card for. Neither of them were tier 1 before it was printed. Maybe they would have had enough new toys post-DKA to be competitive, but that's conjecture. I suppose that some of the U/W decks that do Sun Titan / Phantasmal Image tricks could be sad pandas with it in play, but that deck doesn't HAVE to have that trick to work and could easily board into more of an alternate win condition like WSZ. I wouldn't call that an enormous impact, it's more like a continuation of status quo. Some of the crazy decks people have been talking about like Grimgrin control are hated out pre-emptively, but again, was that deck ever going to be tier 1? I'm not sold on that.
I do like this for Legacy as a threat in my Affinity deck because it's an artifact that sticks around and powers up my Cranial Plating, but I think people are over-estimating how many of these things are going to be hanging around Standard and what sort of impact they'll have. It's far from a "play it or lose" card for most decks and if it becomes common, decks will evolve to mitigate its effect.
I don't disagree at all, and again, I like Snappy, he's a useful card, but if for whatever reason the Cage became a common SB option against the Pike deck, then you could easily swap him out for either more bounce, more counters, or more creatures depending on the opponent. I was thinking along the same lines as you when I was writing my original post up above, if I'm sitting with Snapcaster and Leak in hand and someone lays a Cage I don't think I'm going to bother Leaking. You would be down 1U and the Leak and then need to spend 2UU to cast Snappy and re-use the Leak from the yard. Why not just keep the original Leak and keep back Snappy as an EoT blocker/attacker? Again, if you're playing him a control deck that is flashing back Day of Judgment, then sure, I could see wanting to stop a Cage in a few more situations, but most of the time the Snapcaster just isn't central enough to a deck's strategy to make wasting a counter on a Cage worthwhile.
Again, FWIW, I also don't see how this card has already reached the price level that it's at, it's simply unsustainable. This is a normal rare card in a small set that is about to be drafted heavily. The card itself is great for what it does, but again, I think most people are going to realize that you don't even need to run it, its existence in the meta will mean that you can easily cheat and rarely be punished for it.
You need to take my quote in context. It's narrow in the sense that it only turns off a handful of cards in most of the competitive decks in the current Standard meta. That means that it won't be worth putting in against them. Yes, it shuts off some strategies like Pod, Burning Vengeance that looked like they were going to get more toys out of the new set, but it's not going to be put in to shut down just opposing Snapcasters or just opposing GSZ, it's just a 1-1 at that point, and not against the cards that actively make those decks work and kill you.