Howdy all, I play in a large and competitive LGS twice a week. Mondays see 30-40+ players and Fridays regularly exceed 60. Lately my shop has been absolutely soaked in Blood Moon and Ensnaring Bridge--like, half the matches I play lately run these cards, often in the main. There's also plenty of Affinity and Humans as well as a cross section of just about anything else you might expect to see at a spiky FNM scene.
I tweaked the standard build with Bridge, Moon, and go-wide aggro in mind. Here's what I'll try tomorrow:
4x Grudge because f*&% Ensnaring Bridge, for real. I am SO sick of Bridge.
Verdant Catacombs gives me another tool to fetch a Swamp if I'm worried about Blood Moon--though the primary goal is for Moon to be bad against me anyway, due to the deck choice itself. Catacombs can get Stomping Ground if I needed it to and didn't have any Bloodstained Mire left to fetch.
EE main for maindeck Bridges, and the aggro matches. It also hits Chalice if that card turns up.
How about the Leylines side? They hedge against the mirror, KCI, Goryo's, etc. Are players here still supporting this card?
The Catacombs may be too cute, I suspect, right? I guess we're pretty near mono-R, but I've never actually played this deck before so I'm not sure how important having B is in a meta that has a TON of Blood Moon in it. I'm also not familiar enough with the deck to know how much I can lean on Looting etc. to find answers like Grudge, which may not need to be a playset. But again, F*&% ENSNARING BRIDGE.
The Zhalfirin Voids were exceptionally good in the deck and I think there's little doubt that a playset is correct.
I beat 8 Rack, Mardu Pyromancer, RG Ponza, and Affinity, losing to Humans. Blood Moon is all over my shop so it was fun playing a deck that naturally resists that card so well. I enjoyed playing the deck again, it is so dumb sometimes with its mull-20-cards-into-exile-and-then-play-a-T1-Thought-Knot-Seer draws.
After reading the past couple of pages, I offer a friendly reminder that you can ignore users whose commentary you have concluded is without value for you.
But between Thalia and Freebooter, I'm often confused which one to play first. Thalia is probably the right one, as her tax has more impact in the early game than later, and if she anyway attracts a removal, there's more chance Freebooter will properly resolve and/or stay on the battlefield for longer time. Opinions?
Depends on the MU really. And whether we're talking about a T2 or T3 play : sometimes you're on one land with a Vial and the 2-drop will etb on T3.
VS Ad Naus, they generate enough mana so Thalia could be useless, while FreeB played first could strip their wincon. Thalia would be better just before the turn they can go off, in order to screw their mana math, while FreeB gives intel and opens to a Med Mage against a card they may cast for the win later (sometimes it appears it's better to name Lotus Bloom rather than Ad Nauseam because they're really low on mana, for example).
VS Affinity, FreeB has the possibility to prevent Signal Pest from attacking and can take a Cranial Plating before it etb. Thalia is bad in the MU.
VS Living End, Thalia is priority because FreeB won't be able to stop multiple cascade spells.
And so on. The baseline in mdirange / control MUs is to play Thalia first, because she's legendary (a 2nd copy will be easier to play if the opp deals with the 1st one), she can screw opp's mana, she's a better beater, she's a removal magnet that protects following threats, etc...
do you favor an early or late Lieutenant? I mean, do you aim to make it a very big creature, or to spread counters on as many creatures as possible?
It has to be considered as a Champion of the Parish against midrange and control decks, for the most part. Also post-SB, against combo decks that bring removal spells in, you know the one card they're gonna target is your Med Mage for example, so it makes no sense to grow it while you won't even be able to attack through their blockers. Say you name Collected Company, you better play Lieutenant first and grow it. Your utility Humans will be removal magnets and indirectly protect your big fat Lieutenant. I saw pro players suboptimally slow roll their Lieutenant and waste counters all over the place.
It's the same decision you make when you cast Champion before Noble Hierarch. Those two plays are apparently the most difficult ones to make amongst the basics of the archetype, because I see players make the suboptimal play all the time.
Pumping a Med Mage, a Thalia, a FreeB, an Image, etc... each pump must make some sort of sense in the MU. It makes sense to slow Roll Lieutenant when you face creatures that will stall the ground, and where pumping a flyer will be important. But it may also be more important to slowly and painfully grow your Lieut to break a stalled ground at some point, because it's the only one creature that will be ever able to do it in the game.
what do you do if you top deck a Vial on turn 2? Say you kept a hand with a ton on two-drops... You delay your spell to cast Vial anyway? Or you just ignore it for now and you'll play it on turn 3+ along with a two-drops when you get to land #3 (or untap with Hierarch)?
Once again, MU dependant. Say you play VS Ponza, I believe you want your Vial high priority on T2 and ignore your 2-drops. VS Burn, don't you fear Eidolon of the Great Revel so Vial would be key not to take a million damage ?
Your questions are very interesting and there's no baseline to follow, it's always wrong to think a card has always priority over another one in this deck, it systematically depends on what you face.
headminerve, this is a really well crafted response, nicely said and thank you!
If there are fewer players, then there is less demand, hence prices will drop. This is literally the very first, most fundamental principle of markets. It was a bizarre statement.
I don't know anything about the overall size of the Modern player base but personally I tend to interpret rising prices (often in the face of reprints) as being pretty fair evidence that Modern is growing, not shrinking.
I'm still playing 1 Reflecting Pool and 1 Seachrome Coast. While I can imagine some one-landers are keepable, if the one land is Coast (out of 2), you absolutely need Vial (combined odds 1.5%), or 2-3 Champions (combined odds 0.25%). With odds so small, cut them in half by replacing 1 Coast by 1 Pool, and you don't lose much percentage points.
FWIW, A two-lander with Seachrome and Ziggurat will cast Vial on T1, but a Ziggurat and a Pool will not.
Are people struggling with the Hollow One matchup? It's felt pretty favorable to me
Seeing the finals of the SCG event here, I see GR Eldrazi again. I feel like the format is shaping in a bad way for Humans, i.e. more control decks and more aggro decks that can beat us. The issue we have is that there's not enough slots in the SB to improve both extremes of the format.
Vinny (the winner of SCG Milwaukee) is a regular opponent of mine at weekly events in my hometown and he thinks the RG Eldrazi matchup is favored for Humans. I haven't lost to him, though I've only played him two or three times.
I'm glad I'm not the only to realize that Sphere is also good against Control. The play of Path + Snapcaster + flashback Path won't be possible anymore on 4 lands
Or on 5 or even 6 lands, for that matter.
Damping Sphere seems relevant against Hollow One as well, to me, at least on the play.
I am not getting how Humans isn't a White deck. W is the only color that every land taps for. Seven of the deck's ten core creatures need white to cast. There are only three of the core creatures that don't need white, and crucially, one of those taps for W. The side is also frequently half white. If it weren't for White, and its particular color identity traits, there could be no Humans deck.
(Hollow One) is much more resilient than Dredge because while going similarly wide and fast, graveyard hate is often nothing more than a speed bump for it, and there aren't any other effective forms of hate for it either.
I keep thinking that Deft Duelist might actually be a thing. I never really did give her a shot, but I might try a couple next FNM just to see how she feels. An Image copying her loses the sac trigger, which seems not terrible.
Can't believe there's discussion of unbanning Cloudpost and Glimmerpost. What, seven mana isn't enough for your three lands? You'd prefer nine? Maybe 10 isn't enough off four lands? You want 16? You'd like to gain significant life for playing your lands, while you ramp at crazy speed? Boy, have we got the deck for you!
MM17 was amazing, guys, c'mon.
I tweaked the standard build with Bridge, Moon, and go-wide aggro in mind. Here's what I'll try tomorrow:
4x Bloodstained Mire
3x Wooded Foothills
1x Verdant Catacombs
2x Blood Crypt
1x Stomping Ground
3x Blackcleave Cliffs
3x Mountain
1x Swamp
Creature (24)
4x Flameblade Adept
4x Hollow One
4x Bloodghast
4x Flamewake Phoenix
4x Street Wraith
3x Gurmag Angler
1x Tasigur, the Golden Fang
4x Faithless Looting
4x Goblin Lore
4x Burning Inquiry
4x Lightning Bolt
1x Collective Brutality
1x Engineered Explosives
4x Ancient Grudge
3x Leyline of the Void
2x Collective Brutality
2x Grim Lavamancer
2x Blood Moon
1x Dismember
1x Terminate
- 4x Grudge because f*&% Ensnaring Bridge, for real. I am SO sick of Bridge.
- Verdant Catacombs gives me another tool to fetch a Swamp if I'm worried about Blood Moon--though the primary goal is for Moon to be bad against me anyway, due to the deck choice itself. Catacombs can get Stomping Ground if I needed it to and didn't have any Bloodstained Mire left to fetch.
- EE main for maindeck Bridges, and the aggro matches. It also hits Chalice if that card turns up.
- How about the Leylines side? They hedge against the mirror, KCI, Goryo's, etc. Are players here still supporting this card?
The Catacombs may be too cute, I suspect, right? I guess we're pretty near mono-R, but I've never actually played this deck before so I'm not sure how important having B is in a meta that has a TON of Blood Moon in it. I'm also not familiar enough with the deck to know how much I can lean on Looting etc. to find answers like Grudge, which may not need to be a playset. But again, F*&% ENSNARING BRIDGE.Thoughts?
4x Eldrazi Temple
4x Zhalfirin Void
4x Blinkmoth Nexus
3x Ghost Quarter
2x Mutavault
2x Gemstone Caverns
2x Scavenger Grounds
2x Wastes
Creature (24)
4x Eldrazi Mimic
4x Eternal Scourge
4x Thought-Knot Seer
4x Reality Smasher
2x Endless One
2x Matter Reshaper
4x Simian Spirit Guide
4x Serum Powder
4x Chalice of the Void
1x Smuggler's Copter
Instant (4)
4x Dismember
2x Surgical Extraction
2x Sorcerous Spyglass
3x Spatial Contortion
4x Relic of Progenitus
4x Ratchet Bomb
I beat 8 Rack, Mardu Pyromancer, RG Ponza, and Affinity, losing to Humans. Blood Moon is all over my shop so it was fun playing a deck that naturally resists that card so well. I enjoyed playing the deck again, it is so dumb sometimes with its mull-20-cards-into-exile-and-then-play-a-T1-Thought-Knot-Seer draws.
I don't know anything about the overall size of the Modern player base but personally I tend to interpret rising prices (often in the face of reprints) as being pretty fair evidence that Modern is growing, not shrinking.
Damping Sphere seems relevant against Hollow One as well, to me, at least on the play.
C'mon, son.