MTG Salvation

You might be right about that, but that thread seems very hostile compared to this one. I haven't seen anyone yet bring up the 4x list there but there has been some discussion here on it. Most pilots of the deck have labeled it Jeskai midrange but I can take the discussion elsewhere if need be.

T-hulk is a good suggestion. It might be a better creature to help protect Quellers through flashing back Cryptics.

It seems like Heir of Falkenrath is a strict upgrade to Olivia's Dragoon in your list.

This new Haunted Dead card seems like a great substitute for Stitchwing Skaab, giving all the same benefits of triggering Amalgam, but helps to keep the deck in Jund colors.

Take a look: https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/4qfxil/haunted_dead_and_ingenious_skaab/

I've been testing a list similar to @Gus07's for the past few weeks on Xmage and in paper. It seems very solid so far with many matchups being 50-50 or better. I have yet to find a MU that feels unwinnable. Here is the list:



Here is the breakdown of decks I've played so far.
Scoreboard: 15-4-0
Decks beat: Primal Command, RW Prison, Jund, Abzan, Naya Burn, Zoo, UB Thopters, U Tron, Affinity, GW Midrange, GR Land Destruction, RG Tron, B Tron
Decks lost: GW Tokens, Mono Red Burn, Boros Burn, Ad Nauseum

The burn MU seems good in theory, with 8 post-board lifelinkers, but it still hasn't been easy. What I've found so far is that the deck plays like Jund, but with a better clock and less controlling elements. 8 lords feels like a good number. Stromkirk is amazing in the aggro MU, and Nocturnus can steal wins easily. Indulgent aristocrat is still great, but he only really shines in grindy games and burn. I'm hoping there is at least 1 more lord that will be printed in the next set to replace 1 of the Indulgents. Blood moon really pushes this deck into the competitive range, it is definitely a must for the sideboard.

Quote from TappingStones »

Also none of the "math" that was quoted actually checks out. You don't run Serum Visions so that you can cut lands. You run SV to help find cards you need. Sometimes land, sometimes spells. It doesn't have a land cutting effect. And as was already said in Nahiri builds(and SV) builds having MORe land is better because you can loot them away or scry them away. Having too few lands, for example no blue source or your SV gets Thoughtseized, IOK, etc. Is unnecessarily risky.

You actually can cut a land for each playset of cantrips that you run, even if that is not why they are used. I did a pretty in-depth analysis of how Serum Visions changes your land drop percentage. Here was what the result:
"Running 3 Serum Visions increases your percent chance of hitting land drops 3-4 on time by a more than 4-5%. A full playset of remand increases your chances by about 4%. Each land increases this percentage by 3-4%."

I did it for 3 Serum Visions in a deck, but you can guess what 4 does. The full write-up is in the UWR Midrange primer on page 192.

Quote from TheAller »

Edit: by the way, for Delver decks, I think there's something your model doesn't account for: mulligans. If you run a Delver deck with 0 cantrips, you can't keep a one lander. You need to mulligan. But you can keep a one lander with Serum Visions. So cantrips increase the number of keepable hands. This however isn't true for our Geist deck. 'Cause, at least IMHO, you can't keep a one lander, even with Visions in it. This deck still needs 2 lands in the opening hand to work.

My model can't account for the scry part of the mulligan, but it can account for mulligans otherwise. It would just decrease your cards drawn by the number of times you mulliganed. But now that we know the percentages, you are still ~90% likely to hit two lands by turn 2, which is much higher than a Delver deck.

Quote from Rutherjc19 »

So I've been lurking for quite some time... and I think I'm finally making the switch over to midrange. I was trying to go a prowess/tempo build, but my meta is very competitive, and honestly it gets eaten alive Lol so I hope this thread is active, because I'm going to have a lot of questions and want a LOT of feedback

Welcome Rutherjc19! I remember seeing you around the Jeskai Prowess forum. I made the switch to midrange a few months ago and haven't looked back.

I’ve come up with a good statistical model of how Serum Visions and Remand affect a deck’s ability to hit land drops. This was a fun problem to work on, I hope it helps and makes sense. If you want to skip to the results, go straight to the TL;DR section.

Derivation
First off, It’s very straightforward to figure out how likely you are to draw a certain number of lands by a certain turn. You can do that simply with combination operators:


Where C(n,k) is the combination operator, landsDrawn is the number of lands you have drawn, cardsDrawn is the number of cards you have drawn in the course of the game, and landsDeck is the number of lands in your deck. This is useful information because it can tell you how likely you are to hit a certain land drop by a given turn. For example, if Deck A runs 22 lands, it is 87% likely to hit the second land drop by turn 2. If Deck B has 24 lands, it is 91% likey. Checks out so far.

Serum Visions and Remand have some effect on these percentages because they act as cantrips and SV lets you scry 2. Before we start on how these affect the probabilities, let's list the basic assumptions:

1. You always cast both cards if you draw them
2. You always scry non-land cards to the bottom of your library and you always leave scryed lands on top

Without these assumptions, modeling their effect on lands drops would be much more difficult. With the first assumption, our model only really becomes useful after turn 2, since we need 2 mana to cast either card. We’ve already seen that both Decks A and B are likely to do this, so let’s move on to the effect of each card.

Serum Visions effectively acts to thin out your deck. It’s a cantrip, so you automatically draw a card, but by assumption 2, you will also move non-land cards to the bottom of your deck. For example, if you cast SV and scry into 2 non-land cards to the bottom, you will have thinned out your deck by 3 cards total. If you scry into 1 non-land card and 1 land card, you will have thinned out the deck by 2 cards. In the math, this modifies the number of cards in your deck:


Where,


The probability of drawing serum visions can be solved with Equation [1] by replacing some variables. The equation for SV Thinning Function is a bit more cumbersome to type out, but follows the logic stated above and is a function of lands in deck, lands drawn, cards drawn, and cards in deck.

Remand is much easier to account for, since it is a simple cantrip. You will always draw just one card when it is played. This also modifies the number of cards in your deck:


Both Serum Visions and Remand also increase the number of cards you have drawn in a game. Subsequently, in the math the probability of drawing either card has to be added to the number of cards drawn in a game:


(Side note: This last formula is actually a bit tricky, because it is recursive. The probability of Drawing SV and Remand increases with the number of cards you have drawn, which increases based on your percent chance of drawing either card, which increases with the number of cards you have drawn... etc. We would need to use an iterative method to solve this, but for simplicity we will just use the first term)

If we substitute Equation [4] and [5] into Equation [1] for the value 60, we have a function that tells us how often we will hit a land drop based on the number of cards drawn, lands in deck, and if we are running SV or Remand. Awesome!

TL;DR
So what does this mean? We can input some additional information to compare Decks A and B:

Deck A: contains 22 lands, 3 serum visions, 4 remands
Deck B: contains 24 lands, 0 serum visions, 4 remands

We already know that our model is only useful after turn 2, so let's look at how often both decks can hit their third land drop by turn 3, on the play:

Deck A: 80% (as opposed to 72% without SV and Remand)
Deck B: 83% (as opposed to 79% without Remand)

How about the fourth land drop by turn 4, on the play:

Deck A: 65% (as opposed to 54% without SV and Remand)
Deck B: 69% (as opposed to 63% without Remand)

All of these percentages go up if you are on the draw.

WayTL;DR
Running 3 Serum Visions increases your percent chance of hitting land drops 3-4 on time by a more than 4-5%. A full playset of remand increases your chances by about 4%. Each land increases this percentage by 3-4%. This analysis was strictly based on how these cards affect land drops, they obviously have their own very useful abilities. What we did see is that if you are running 4 cantrips, they will have the same effect on land drops as a single land would. This is why delver-style decks can get away with running a fewer land than necessary. Any less cantrips than that shouldn't be considered as having a significant effect.

For those interested, I have the calculator programmed in Mathematica. I can look into making some sort of web based form of it.

Quote from TheAller »

There must be something wrong with the model. The results on Delver decks show it better than the result on our deck. 10 cantrips + 18 lands is not the same as 0 cantrips and 19 lands. It just can't be.

You are totally right, the results surprised me as well. I've played with SV in the past and it did seem to do more work with hitting land drops than 1%. I think I made one error in my model and will be correcting for it once I get home. I need to be adding the probabilty of drawing SV and Remand turns 1 and 2 into the "Cards Drawn" variable. I'll let you know once I've edited the post above.

EDIT: Fixed the math in my equation above, sorry for the confusion. @TheAller was definitely correct that something wasn't quite right. With the fixed maths, the results show that 4 cantrip cards are equal to a single land in terms of hitting land drops. Thanks for tuning in and I hoped you find the information useful!

Quote from TheAller »

Why would you run TiTi as an anti-aggro card when there are so many better anti-aggro cards out there?

Me I have 2x Timely Reinforcements and 2x Anger of the Gods. I also have 2x Stony Silence and 2x Celestial Purge. This together with the usual maindeck package (Path, Bolt, Helix, Electrolyze, Snare) is enough to be above 50% vs aggro.

Because TiTi can win games after it sweeps the board. It fixes the one problem our deck has when playing the control side - closing out games. I tested with this card all weekend, and it makes the aggro matchup closer to 70% when played with 3-4 in the deck. It is a bad card when there is plenty of spot removal, but that's why it is a great compliment to Geist.

I'm not saying to not run Timely Reinforcements and Anger of the Gods, they are both great cards. But, try running 1x Anger, 1x Timely, and 3x Titi in your sideboard and you will not be dissapointed.

The biggest downside that I can see to Thassa, God of the Sea is that she doesn't trigger prowess herself. Her scry ability may more than make-up for that drawback. It seems like the new Slip Through Space is the top contender for Jeskai Prowess decks, since it works so well with both Abbot of Keral Keep and Geist of Saint Traft.

Since we're on the topic of cards that haven't been discussed in a while, how do you guys feel about Meddling Mage in the current meta? I am thinking of using it as a sideboard card against Tron, Scapeshift, Ad Nauseam, and maaaaybe Eldrazi decks. I have two mainboard Grim Lavamancer that are fairly ineffective in these match-ups, and Meddling Mage seems like it may be a good sideboard swap. Our decks use a decent amount of knowledge cards (mine uses 4x Gitaxian Probe and Mishra's Bauble), so I feel like he has enough support cards. Does anyone have good experience with this card?

Quote from steven11788 »

I keep playing this, the young pyro, token version. The bob version, the nahiri version. Even my best build is lack luster. I love mardu but still. Cant put results up like with Boros nahiri or any black green deck.

I've tried basically every build you mentioned except the Nahiri one (but I've seen enough Mardu Nahiri videos to know it's not a Tier 1 deck). The most consistent build (by far) is using a BW Token shell and using red for bolt, helix, and better sideboard cards against combo. Not the most interesting way to take the deck but it's the strongest Mardu shell.

We can't play control as well as Uxx. We can't play midrange as well without Tarmogoyf because unlike Monastery Mentor or Pyromancer, Tarmogoyf doesn't require any situational synergy to be good. Not to mention Goyf is just much faster at putting out a clock and has greater resilience to removal.

So the idea is to cut all the token generator and use cards that will make your opponent's spot removal bad (lingering souls, bitterblossom, spectral procession, etc.). The only combo piece is an anthem, which you have 7-8 of in the deck. The rest of your cards are the best 1-for-1 removal spells in Modern to guarantee you will reap virtual card advantage. You should only play Pyromancer and Mentor in a format where you have insane card draw spells and protective counterspells (vintage/ legacy).

BW Tokens was always a powerful fair deck that you occasionally saw at world cup qualifiers and pro tours. While it was very good against the small aggro decks (affinity, infect) since you can chump X/1 creatures, it lost a lot against big aggro (merfolk, zoo, goblins, etc.) because it lacked the efficient burn spells. Adding red makes the deck better against virtually everything (even Jund which is already favorable) and makes the combo match-ups better.

Guys/Girls,

I've said this before, and I'll say it again.

First and foremost, as I've said many times, this deck is not well setup to benefit from the tempo advantage that Remand can create. It can, but you need a few things to go in your favor. For Remand to be best, you need a resolved threat, preferably Geist, and you need your opponent to play a spell that costs three or more on their turn four. Remand can be ok if you're Remanding a spell, playing Geist onto an empty board and you have an efficient answer to it when they re-play it after you play Geist, but many times Leak will have just been better. I like Remand in this deck as a one or two of.

Four Remand is not where we want to be with this deck most times, and especially right now. It's bad against too many of the top decks in the format.

These are the top 8 decks right now on magic online (not in order)...
Jund - Their spells are too efficient, and the ones that aren't need to actually be countered.
Infect - Almost everything costs one. Bolting the first creature and Mana Leaking their second is miles better than remanding their second only for them to re-play it.
Affinity - LOL - Leak is much better because you can use it to actually counter an Etched Champion.
Burn - Their most expensive spell costs two, but more importantly Remand does not trade which is what you need to do to win.
Tron - Many people think Remand is good here, but in most cases it isn't. It can be good, but it's only good if you can manage to setup a resolved Geist and they're trying to resolve a Karn/Wurm. Most times thing will not be going your way, and you need to be leaking their turn three play not remanding it. You certainly wouldn't board it out, but it is not as good as Leak. Leak will help you create an opportunity to turn the game around, Remand will only if things are already going your way.
Zoo - Basically the same as burn.
Merfolk - All counters are more or less bad, they are not how you beat this deck.
Jeskai Nahiri - Remand is great here!

Leak is better positioned against all of those decks except Merfolk, and to some extend Nahiri, but against Nahiri I want both for different reasons.

There is ONE deck I really want Remand for. The other 7 make up 41% of the meta. Are you sure you want 4 x Remand in your list? I am not saying don't run remand at all, but I am saying don't run all four and only four as your counter spell suite.

If you're looking at the recent results from the SCG Event/MTGO 5-0 performances and using that to justify the four of Remand, you are being results oriented. Those performance do not change the facts that I've listed above.

This isn't a feeling or a hunch, it's analysis, reason, and experience. I'm not going to abandon what makes sense just because someone did well at a tournament.