I think the second Eidolon is overkill and the Riftsweeper is too cute, you could free up two precious sideboard slots for either value which you are lacking or another unique and more impactful bullet like Magus. Without KCI in the format Eidolon rarely gets boarded in and often a Shalai/Spellskite represents an additional Eidolon once you have the first one out. V Storm for example a Shalai is even better than Eidolon #2 due to Echoing Truth.
This entirely depends on your expected meta though.
Not really. KCI was actually a pretty decent match up in my experience.
It was likely even a favorable matchup until KCI started playing Spine. That alone made game 1 terrible for Whir since it needed to have both the lock and the two Tormod's Crypt with a Jar in play to exile Spine in response to its trigger and through a Retriever.
Big IF, since its not that good, but I would say if we hit some hypothetical where ANOTHER artifact deck breaks, Opal would finally eat it.
I think you're seriously underestimating the deck. I'd say that out of the currently 30-ish most played decks in modern it only has 3 bad matchups. Jeskai and UW primarily due to cryptic circumventing the welding jars/needles, and burn which is actually closer than expected.
It doesn't surprise me that many former kci players are turning to the deck as the next best mox opal deck, it's hard to master but has a very high ceiling.
from what ive seen of the deck its worst matchup is itself. not as bad as something like boggles or grishoalbrand, but its draws are polarized enough that the average suffers for it.
Not really. Bogles and Grishoalbrand are actually pretty bad against Whir Prison, IMO; they're just too flimsy and linear. The worst match up is by far BGx midrange. Abrupt Decay beats Chalice and Bridge (with no Jar, obviously), targeted discard is extremely effective against the deck before it gets an Academy Ruins online, and Goyf/Tasigur/Flayer/Ooze are fantastic threats against Whir Prison if they can't protect their Bridges, which they rarely can if they've been slowed enough. Grixis Death's Shadow is a close second, since they have the same discard as GBx but get countermagic to shut off your Whirs and kill you much faster. Tron is a pain in the neck too since they can topdeck Karn, Ostone, or Ugin to wipe your board. UW control is also great against Whir prison thanks to cards like Negate, Detention Sphere, and Stony Silence out of the sideboard.
I would say that Whir prison is well positioned against many of the decks that are currently popular (Izzet Phoenix and Dredge in particular) and it uses many of the same cards as the KCI decks.
ah yeah, nothing to disagree with. im an idiot and for some reason i thought you guys were talking about hardened scales affinity. my reply was aimed at hardened scales seeming inconsistent much like bogles or grishoalbrand.
as for URx whir decks im not worried about them getting out of hand, decks like BGx, UW control, and tron can handle them fairly easily. even with a bunch of needle effects pushing through countermagic and the walkers threatening to ultimate is typically too much to handle, and tron just...does tron things. tron destroys lantern, and i dont see anything that would change that dichotomy in URx whir.
On paper Tron might look like a poor matchup but it ultimately has a really hard time fighting through Damping Sphere, the multiple Sorcerous Spyglass and the Tec Edge+Crucible lock. Lantern tries to lock the player out in a different manner, one which is much harder to achieve against Tron due to the sheer amount of relevant threats and Chromatic Sphere.
The same goes for BGx, with Whir serving as copies 5-8 of any needed artifact along with the 4 Ancient Stirrings the deck is redundant enough to consistently land a Bridge with one of the 4 Welding Jars through disruption. Then you only need to find a needle effect for Liliana and the game will eventually drag out until you´ve found enough Jar/Bridges that the few Decay effects won´t suffice. Post SB the 4 Spellskite make it even harder to get a Bridge off the table and Whir also brings in additional needle effects + Sai.
The deck is by no means easy to play and a big factor, at least in paper, is actually the clock. If you´re playing against someone who, either out of stubbornness or inexperience refuses to concede, then the games can often go to time since actually winning the game is a very tedious process, especially game 1.
I´ve played with and against Whir a good amount recently and I believe the deck is a serious contender to be the next best deck in modern. With KCI gone which was one of the worst matchups, and many KCI players gravitating towards picking the deck up themselves I reckon we´re going to see alot more of it in the near future.
It "protects" from boardwipes but has the issue that the druid comes back summoning sick, meaning that a savvy player can kill your druid on upkeep if you have a saffi out. This is also an issue which comes up when we face Eldrazi Displacer for example. Saffi also dies to bolt which Skite dodges so I think it's just inferior in this iteration, if we were to include a mix of Rallier/Finks/Seer Saffis value would go up alot but we don't have that many flex slots.
I have been playing alot of Arena lately and less modern, how has the blue splash and incubation/incongruity been performing?
Can we just get rid of Limited? Do we really need both Limited and Standard to sell packs?
Limited is much more enjoyable for me than any constructed format, without it 99% of the printed cards would be completely useless since they wouldn't see play in any format at all. I reckon it actually sells more packs than standard since most players just buy singles when they intend on building a constructed deck rather than cracking packs hoping to get lucky.
Big IF, since its not that good, but I would say if we hit some hypothetical where ANOTHER artifact deck breaks, Opal would finally eat it.
I think you're seriously underestimating the deck. I'd say that out of the currently 30-ish most played decks in modern it only has 3 bad matchups. Jeskai and UW primarily due to cryptic circumventing the welding jars/needles, and burn which is actually closer than expected.
It doesn't surprise me that many former kci players are turning to the deck as the next best mox opal deck, it's hard to master but has a very high ceiling.
Many feel the KCI banning will reduce the amount of artifact hate in the meta. As a result, previously suppressed artifact decks may rise again. Hardened Scales will be miserable and traditional Affinity is not much better. Wedging Linvala into the sideboard (also stops the new Vannifar decks) is the obvious solution, but what do we cut for her?
Also, I'm expecting a decrease in graveyard hate, so Postmortem Lunge may be better than ever.
I found that we're favourable against both hardened scales and affinity, the only issue is walking ballista with scales/ravager and the other games should be pretty easy if you can at least present the combo on turn 4/5 since we can even chump with our birds if they have an inkmoth kill. Post side the biggest issue is grafdiggers so it depends on how many deputy of detention/koa you play.
Pre-board I agree that our beatdown plan is very mediocre. Just nitpicking, but 4 of those 0 power creatures are Hierarchs which are actually very decent at contributing to the beatdown plan.
After Sideboarding it gets quite a bit better though, with everything from Scoozes to Trackers and Gideon, and in long games the value Duskwatch provides is also very good.
You can always add some Gavony Township if you feel like you're forced to go the beatdown plan too often, it's a very real wincon with the amount of dorks we play and sinergizes well with Devoted Druid.
So I played this deck on Friday in Prague for 2 byes and went 2-1 losing to UW (Terminus is a retarded card) to then 4-0 the second trial and win the byes. On Sunday after dropping from day 2 I went 2-0-1 drawing v Izzet Phoenix in an extremely grindy match 2 which I ended up winning and then went 4-1 in an mtgo league on monday before departing from Prague again, so my latest results with the deck are 12-2-1 which is pretty sweet ^^.
Funnily enough I got surgical'ed twice in those games and I ended up winning both, once against the Izzet Phoenix I drew against but won the second game, and the second time was against a Mardu player who surgical'ed me twice just to lose to the beatdown plan as well, so I don't believe it's a good card against us since we have a more reliable plan B than most other combo decks.
I do realize that after sideboard, I don't need to be a Combo deck; I just need to be a deck that doesn't lose to Burn.
This is exactly it, against decks like Burn which have such a high density of interaction my plan is just to take as little damage as possible, trade redundant creatures off whenever presented with the opportunity and then land either a Shalai which turns off their Searing Blaze effects or one of the two Ooze and get it out of Bolt range right away. It's fine to "overboard" in these matchups in my opinion, it reminds me of the sideboard plan Storm applies against decks such as Grixis DS where they board out basically all mana dorks and try to win in a completely different fashion without removing their abillity to combo off if presented with the opportunity.
On the play
- 1 E Witness, - 1 Duskwatch Recruiter (the most redundant combo piece), -2 Eldritch Evolution, -4 Postmortem Lunge
On the draw
- 1 E Witness, 1 Duskwatch Recruiter, -2 Chord of Calling, -4 Postmortem Lunge
The switch of Chord/Eldritch Evo otp and on the draw might seem odd but I think the logic I applied is fine.
After sideboarding we have a total of 10 1cc creatures so, especially on the play, our Chords for x=1+ are actually live often, you can also Chord for x=0 if you're stuck with multiples in hand to get a Dryad Arbor.
Crucially, Chords, beside Shalai, are the only cards which get around Eidolon dealing us damage, and since my gameplan is often trading whenever possible/beneficial I don't really like Eldritch Evolution that much since it's card disadvantage, except to get Shalai, to get an Ooze late game or to combo off if the Burn player is stumbling.
On the draw Chords get worse and we are a card up so the drawback of Eldritch Evolution gets slightly mitigated. Also, if the opponent goes turn 1 Guide into turn 2 Eidolon we are likely forced to turn our 1-Drop into Knight of Autumn to present a possible trade for Guide and get Eidolon off the table.
Either way, I think in this matchup we are favored on the play and on the backfoot on the draw due to Eidolon/Chord and just Burn doing what it does.
It seems like AcademyRuins leaves in the Lunges v Burn which is good when the opponent has a hand with little interaction, but my instinct is to board them out due to the obvious life loss. Especially if they see the card game one a savvy Burn player will not expose himself to getting combo'ed if he has the option. I have definitely not tested the matchup enough to know what is exactly correct though, I'm just giving my opinion
Yeah, the attack was to find a path to victory and a single non creature spell next turn makes the Swiftspear a 2/3 anyway. Sometimes I wish I could gain 2 life with the Knight of Autumn and put one +1/+1 counter, but that would make it even more busted.
Yeah, the attack seemed odd to me at first but it is because our gameplans against Burn differ a bit. You want to mantain your creatures on board since you are playing 2 Worships, and I want to gobble up as much damage as possible since I have 2 Ooze. Iirc (I'm at work, can't confirm unfortunately :P) the opponent had a Rift Bolt suspended so I thought to myself, if you don't attack there are two things which might go in your favor. The first one is that he kills your KoA instead of the dork to force through damage, the second one, and this is more relevant to my gameplan, is that the Knight might possibly be preventing 3+ damage from a Swiftspear (due to the additional prowess trigger from the Rift Bolt) instead of future 2 damage. Once I saw your Worship I definitely thought you made the right call though.
Edit: Note that the Sideboarding I did vs Burn is specific for my Sideboard plan, If I have a Kor Firewalker in the SB for example then the 4 Eldritch Evolution would definitely always stay in, but I just don't have such a bomb in my 15 to justify leaving in all 4.
I think I'm going to test Sylvan Safekeeper as an alternative to Spellskite to protect Kiki-Jiki that I can tutor up with Ranger of Eos.
If it is good enough for Legacy I think it has a fair shot in Modern.
That would be a sick option if it were modern legal would highly likely singlehandedly make the Devoted Druid decks tier 1.
I strongly doubt you can Grapeshot kill your opponent on their turn with Electrodominance unless they've shocked themselves really low. Past in Flames is a sorcery, and if you're going the Remand/Unsubstantiate route you need to cast Grapeshot again.
If you're not using Electrodominance to play one of the costless Time Spiral suspend spells, all it really does is deal X damage for RR. Electrodominance for X=2 costs 4 mana, deals 2 damage to something, and you get a 2-drop out of it. Bolt followed by hardcasting a 2-drop costs 3 mana, deals 3 damage to something, and you get the same 2-drop out of it.
Why not? With a Baral/Electromancer in play, cast some rituals on your opponents turn, cast Electrodominance for x=4 revealing Past in Flames, start playing your stuff from the graveyard to get the storm count up, flashback Electrodominance casting Grapeshot from your hand You could even do this endstep to cast an Empty the Warrens giving your Goblins pseudo haste, awesome stuff . Obviously just because you could doesn`t mean you should, it`s definitely unplayable in this version of Storm.
Start of with Llanowar elves, turn 2 land, then tap Llanowar elves for one mana which gives 3 mana in total,then play might of old Krosa in your main phase which gets devoted druid up to a 4/7 then pay 2 life and put mutagenic growth on devoted druid making it a 6/8 then using devoted druids ability I can have it tap for mana 6 times giving six mana, will this work or am I missing something?
Devoted Druid has summoning sickness so you won`t be able to tap him for mana on the second turn.
The only way you can hard cast a Gigantosaurus on turn 2 in modern is with the help of Simian Spirit Guide.
For example - Turn 1, Forest + Simian Spirit Guide, cast Devoted Druid. Turn 2 - do something like you described with Mutagenic/Might of Old Krosa and cast him.
Or
Forest, Simian Spirit Guide + Devoted Druid / Pentad Prism , Turn 2 - Forest as 2nd land drop, add 4 green with either of your turn 1 plays, exile another Simian Spirit Guide, cast Manamorphose to convert that red into the fifth green source.
Technically it is possible, but is it worth it or can it be consistently done? Not really.
Hello ! Cannot find an updated guide for the side. can someone help me?
You cannot find one because there still is none since the lists vary alot. Once Incubation/Incongruity is released and the ban announcement is made the 75 will likely be more refined so I'd wait until then.
I don't think I would change anything from the deck so far. I've only played this twice, going 2-4 at the Mythic Championship Qualifier in Oakland on Sunday and 4-2 today at a STACKED IQ. I saw a list that had 2 Gideon, Ally of Zendikar, so I wanted to try it. Since I only owned 1, I could only try 1. It possibly doesn't beat GB, as they have Assassin's Trophy anyway. I was unsure of how it would fare vs. Tireless Tracker. But I've tried Tireless Trackers before, so I wanted to give Gideon a fair shot. Maybe Gideon of the Trials is better? The mulligans were pretty obvious ones. I feel that sometimes you have to keep hands that literally need to draw a single land to operate - like 1 land, Druid, Vizier, Recruiter, and some other stuff. It is a combo deck and sometimes you lose to not drawing a land. It doesn't really matter which way you lose; each way hurts equally.
Did you watch my match at 4 hours and 50 minutes? I wanted to get some feedback if I could. I got some feedback from my video of my match with Bogles and it really helped me as a player. I feel that with more feedback from videos like this, I can definitely improve as a player.
Definitely bring in the Paths against burn. Unlike older lists running Finks we don`t have creatures which brickwall Swiftspear and both Eidolon/Lavamancer are a huge beating if left unchecked. The creatures are what beat you in that specific game since you were on a very big life cushion until the Swiftspears started beating you down. I see you aren`t running any Scooze but those can easily win the game for us, maybe not in that specific game but for example my most recent win v Burn was with a 9/9 scooze just gobbling up all the creatures he killed. Your last game was sad, 1 land and you`d have landed Shalai, given your dorks hexproof to then land Worship. I didn`t notice anything you could have done differently to be honest, the only thing you could`ve done was trying to hit the Dryad Arbor off Commune and taking 1 damage off the Canopy the turn you played Devoted Druid and left up the Canopy. You were in such a bad spot I think I would have risked it, but that wouldn`t have paid off since you Commune`d next turn and didn`t see the Arbor, still a line you could have taken. Oh and the attack with KoA was a bit ambitious but I get that you wanted to get in damage to find a path to victory.
This entirely depends on your expected meta though.
The same goes for BGx, with Whir serving as copies 5-8 of any needed artifact along with the 4 Ancient Stirrings the deck is redundant enough to consistently land a Bridge with one of the 4 Welding Jars through disruption. Then you only need to find a needle effect for Liliana and the game will eventually drag out until you´ve found enough Jar/Bridges that the few Decay effects won´t suffice. Post SB the 4 Spellskite make it even harder to get a Bridge off the table and Whir also brings in additional needle effects + Sai.
The deck is by no means easy to play and a big factor, at least in paper, is actually the clock. If you´re playing against someone who, either out of stubbornness or inexperience refuses to concede, then the games can often go to time since actually winning the game is a very tedious process, especially game 1.
I´ve played with and against Whir a good amount recently and I believe the deck is a serious contender to be the next best deck in modern. With KCI gone which was one of the worst matchups, and many KCI players gravitating towards picking the deck up themselves I reckon we´re going to see alot more of it in the near future.
I have been playing alot of Arena lately and less modern, how has the blue splash and incubation/incongruity been performing?
It doesn't surprise me that many former kci players are turning to the deck as the next best mox opal deck, it's hard to master but has a very high ceiling.
I found that we're favourable against both hardened scales and affinity, the only issue is walking ballista with scales/ravager and the other games should be pretty easy if you can at least present the combo on turn 4/5 since we can even chump with our birds if they have an inkmoth kill. Post side the biggest issue is grafdiggers so it depends on how many deputy of detention/koa you play.
After Sideboarding it gets quite a bit better though, with everything from Scoozes to Trackers and Gideon, and in long games the value Duskwatch provides is also very good.
You can always add some Gavony Township if you feel like you're forced to go the beatdown plan too often, it's a very real wincon with the amount of dorks we play and sinergizes well with Devoted Druid.
Funnily enough I got surgical'ed twice in those games and I ended up winning both, once against the Izzet Phoenix I drew against but won the second game, and the second time was against a Mardu player who surgical'ed me twice just to lose to the beatdown plan as well, so I don't believe it's a good card against us since we have a more reliable plan B than most other combo decks.This is exactly it, against decks like Burn which have such a high density of interaction my plan is just to take as little damage as possible, trade redundant creatures off whenever presented with the opportunity and then land either a Shalai which turns off their Searing Blaze effects or one of the two Ooze and get it out of Bolt range right away. It's fine to "overboard" in these matchups in my opinion, it reminds me of the sideboard plan Storm applies against decks such as Grixis DS where they board out basically all mana dorks and try to win in a completely different fashion without removing their abillity to combo off if presented with the opportunity.
Iirc my sideboarding v Burn was:
+2 Burrenton, +3 Path, +2 Scavenging Ooze, +1 Knight of Autumn
On the play
- 1 E Witness, - 1 Duskwatch Recruiter (the most redundant combo piece), -2 Eldritch Evolution, -4 Postmortem Lunge
On the draw
- 1 E Witness, 1 Duskwatch Recruiter, -2 Chord of Calling, -4 Postmortem Lunge
The switch of Chord/Eldritch Evo otp and on the draw might seem odd but I think the logic I applied is fine.
After sideboarding we have a total of 10 1cc creatures so, especially on the play, our Chords for x=1+ are actually live often, you can also Chord for x=0 if you're stuck with multiples in hand to get a Dryad Arbor.
Crucially, Chords, beside Shalai, are the only cards which get around Eidolon dealing us damage, and since my gameplan is often trading whenever possible/beneficial I don't really like Eldritch Evolution that much since it's card disadvantage, except to get Shalai, to get an Ooze late game or to combo off if the Burn player is stumbling.
On the draw Chords get worse and we are a card up so the drawback of Eldritch Evolution gets slightly mitigated. Also, if the opponent goes turn 1 Guide into turn 2 Eidolon we are likely forced to turn our 1-Drop into Knight of Autumn to present a possible trade for Guide and get Eidolon off the table.
Either way, I think in this matchup we are favored on the play and on the backfoot on the draw due to Eidolon/Chord and just Burn doing what it does.
It seems like AcademyRuins leaves in the Lunges v Burn which is good when the opponent has a hand with little interaction, but my instinct is to board them out due to the obvious life loss. Especially if they see the card game one a savvy Burn player will not expose himself to getting combo'ed if he has the option. I have definitely not tested the matchup enough to know what is exactly correct though, I'm just giving my opinion
Edit: Note that the Sideboarding I did vs Burn is specific for my Sideboard plan, If I have a Kor Firewalker in the SB for example then the 4 Eldritch Evolution would definitely always stay in, but I just don't have such a bomb in my 15 to justify leaving in all 4.
That would be a sick option if it were modern legal
The only way you can hard cast a Gigantosaurus on turn 2 in modern is with the help of Simian Spirit Guide.
For example - Turn 1, Forest + Simian Spirit Guide, cast Devoted Druid. Turn 2 - do something like you described with Mutagenic/Might of Old Krosa and cast him.
Or
Forest, Simian Spirit Guide + Devoted Druid / Pentad Prism , Turn 2 - Forest as 2nd land drop, add 4 green with either of your turn 1 plays, exile another Simian Spirit Guide, cast Manamorphose to convert that red into the fifth green source.
Technically it is possible, but is it worth it or can it be consistently done? Not really.
Edit:
Another funny line you can take is:
Turn 1 - Overgrown Tomb + Thoughtseize yourself discarding Devoted Druid,
Turn 2 - Make your land drop, cast Postmortem Lunge targeting your Devoted Druid giving it haste, Cast Might of Old Krosa targeting Devoted Druid and then cast the Gigantosaurus. So it can actually be done without Simian Spirit Guide
You cannot find one because there still is none since the lists vary alot. Once Incubation/Incongruity is released and the ban announcement is made the 75 will likely be more refined so I'd wait until then.
Definitely bring in the Paths against burn. Unlike older lists running Finks we don`t have creatures which brickwall Swiftspear and both Eidolon/Lavamancer are a huge beating if left unchecked. The creatures are what beat you in that specific game since you were on a very big life cushion until the Swiftspears started beating you down. I see you aren`t running any Scooze but those can easily win the game for us, maybe not in that specific game but for example my most recent win v Burn was with a 9/9 scooze just gobbling up all the creatures he killed. Your last game was sad, 1 land and you`d have landed Shalai, given your dorks hexproof to then land Worship. I didn`t notice anything you could have done differently to be honest, the only thing you could`ve done was trying to hit the Dryad Arbor off Commune and taking 1 damage off the Canopy the turn you played Devoted Druid and left up the Canopy. You were in such a bad spot I think I would have risked it, but that wouldn`t have paid off since you Commune`d next turn and didn`t see the Arbor, still a line you could have taken. Oh and the attack with KoA was a bit ambitious