What other pieces of our past might be worth bringing back in for a midrange/control meta? I know it's hard to think of when other people spend all day playing against, Affinity, Death's Shadow and Burn, but in some local metas it's going to be the right call to change things up.
There's one person who also goes to both the weekly events that I do who plays Assault-Loam-Delver. It's basically Seismic Assault, Life from the Loam, Delver of Secrets, Young Pyromancer, Tarmogoyf, Flame Jab and the usual blue and red instants. It's a pain to play against. All his threats are annoying to deal with and in the meantime he sets up Loam recursion for card advantage.
Any tips on this match-up? I never seem to quite have the right balance of keeping his pressure at bay while getting my own going.
Truths seems great against the decks with targeted discard, and not just at invitational. Are there other matches where it makes sense? The slow control matches like Jeskai come to mind. There it can help keep up the gas when we really don't need to be fast but go long.
I'm finding the spellskites less useful lately, but there has also been a local reduction in infect. The other card in rarely board in is echoing truth.
The decline of Patrician's Scorn is all about rise in Lab Maniac. He's basically a one-extra-mana answer to most hate cards.
However, if you need to take care of a permanent on your combo turn, Echoing Truth has a slight advantage over Disenchant in that it can can remove multiples and hits more targets. Doesn't happen very often but it can remove double Spellskite on a combo turn or other random stuff.
That WMCQ list just goes to show the power of 3x Chalice of the Voice in the side-board. It seems like it really helps in a few of the worst match-ups, namely Burn, Infect and Zoo.
The really interesting thing, more so than the lack of Snapcaster (which was a one-of anyway) is 3x Engineered Explosives in the main! That's interesting. It's a very expensive sweeper, but it does hit a lot of different problematic things from Blood Moon to Cranial Platings to Leyline of Sanctity (with a little work).
Hinterland Harbor is going to be pretty terrible because it can't be fetched by basically anything, even Farseek. There have been a surprising number of times that I've picked up a Misty Rainforest and cracked it to get a Breeding Pool with my other one already in play. Your manabase looks a little awkward to me, but maybe because I put a large focus on getting green and blue mana available, that's why I think that 4x Misty Rainforest is the correct call for fetchlands.
I think one reason you'll see decks effectively claim that they have >50% match-ups against a lot of the field is because that is true if they have the right sideboard. One nice thing about UW control is that you can build it many different ways. It has tools to deal with just about every deck, unlike something like Burn which just has a horrible time against a life-gain deck like Soul Sisters (I think?).
This means that if you can properly identify your metagame you can have a pretty good match-up. Take a look at that 10th place list from GP Detroit. 4 main-deck wraths, 7 main-deck exile effects, 8 main-deck land destruction spells. That's knowing your meta.
I think the problem is that we have to choose what decks we want to improve our match-up against and choose cards accordingly. It's a very flexible shell.
As far as the Cascade Bluffs, I think you might have a point there. Maybe it should be a fetch, but I'm not sure. I've had situation where I had Stomping Ground, Forest, Island and Bluffs. Here I could cast my CC, I did not record the number of times where I wish it was a Misty, I will try to do so from now on. Thanks for the question.
I've been running two Flooded Grove and I generally like it. It's very rare for it to be dead since I'm only running 3 mono-R sources currently. I'm on a single Mountain now that I expect Ghost Quarter to be less common with Eldrazi and Tron not being a large force.
Thinking about it, the only double-G spells I run are Obstinate Baloth and Scapeshift. There are some cases where I want to cast two green spells in a single turn, but it's not too common. Maybe one should be a Cascade Bluffs.
A super good meta in my opinion would be one where maybe one week, Jund didn't do "so well." The next week, it makes more of a comeback and so and so for other decks as well. The pendulum should swing back and forth and all over the place. When the pendulum lands on 1 deck, for example Caw Blade at one time in Standard, but stays the same week after week, something is wrong. My explanation is the extremes, so something in the middle or more toward the pendulum swinging are probably best. But then we get to that problem where players don't know what is "the deck to beat." I liked the diversity, although I would have liked to see more Ancestral Vision and Sword of the Meek in the top 32.
A swinging pendulum feels like it can mean one of two things:
The meta is well balanced so the winners are the ones with the best play and who chose the right deck for the specific metagame that week. This is a situation I want to be in. I love a format that rewards deck familiarity and metagame awareness.
The other possibility is that the format is very random. This is a common criticism of Modern with how fast some games can be. If it all boils down to who gets the fewest mulligans and draws into their sideboard cards the most consistently, then we'll get all sorts of different decks in the T8.
Obviously, we'll be somewhere in between. We'll have a suite of decks of various power levels and even the lower power ones can show up for a week if they have a good pilot and get lucky. I just hope that power level puts the top decks relatively close together and there is a variety. We'll have to wait for the next event to know, but with how interactive the decks are I expect it's more of the first.
Ah, that makes sense about the non-sorcery side. I have all sorcery/instant effects in my board with the exception of Baloths right now, so it always works well for me. I never really thought about needing an alternate.
I'm glad Anticipate works though. I've always felt a little underwhelmed by it and found I wanted Peer mostly so I can dig for Scapeshift. There's nothing more frustrating than digging through half your deck and still not finding the win.
Looks like he made room for AV in the sideboard. Still not sold on it, but with some number of Omens the "draw too many mountains" argument doesn't matter. I wonder if it was for the attrition type decks (Looks good against Grixis?).
His deck is strange. It looks like it's trying to play primarily a combo game. Lots of ramp and go straight for the combo with 4 Valakut, 4 Prismatic Omen. It's still impossible to get the combo off before turn 4 as far as I can calculate, so it's not terribly fast. I suppose that's what the limited disruption suite is there for: to last until turn 4 or 5.
I'm not sure if it's a great strategy. If people know what's going on there are ways to fight it, but it is a very hard combo to stop since it's a single sorcery and lands.
After some testing I agree that the only real place for Thopter-Sword is in a dedicated deck. It's just too hard to assemble and take advantage of. Also, it will need some early disruption to function. The T1 Inquisition of Kozilek or Thoughtseize to pull hate out of the opponents hand is very important. It just makes more sense in Tezzerator where you can consistently set it up and it acts as more of a barrier the way that Ensnaring Bridge does.
I'll probably go back to a Elspeth and a more controlling UW Control deck, but first I need to see how my local meta settles out and whether I should invest in a playset of Ancestral Visions.
This is probably one of the best comparisons I've seen. They have similar costs and serve very similar roles in very similar decks. Keranos tends to do more with his lightning-bolt ability which is way better than Jace's second ability.
If this Jace were just four mana instead of five I could see him in a slow blue deck since his +1 is actually quite reasonable due to the scry (probably 1.5 cards worth) and he forces the opponent to react because he threatens getting to the ultimate in 4 turns if unchecked.
What other pieces of our past might be worth bringing back in for a midrange/control meta? I know it's hard to think of when other people spend all day playing against, Affinity, Death's Shadow and Burn, but in some local metas it's going to be the right call to change things up.
Any tips on this match-up? I never seem to quite have the right balance of keeping his pressure at bay while getting my own going.
I'm finding the spellskites less useful lately, but there has also been a local reduction in infect. The other card in rarely board in is echoing truth.
However, if you need to take care of a permanent on your combo turn, Echoing Truth has a slight advantage over Disenchant in that it can can remove multiples and hits more targets. Doesn't happen very often but it can remove double Spellskite on a combo turn or other random stuff.
If I were running only Lightning Storm and Conflagrate as win cons, I'd like having a Patrician's Scorn in the board.
I'm curious if I'm not being aggressive enough with it since I feel like I do only 1/20 games or so.
The really interesting thing, more so than the lack of Snapcaster (which was a one-of anyway) is 3x Engineered Explosives in the main! That's interesting. It's a very expensive sweeper, but it does hit a lot of different problematic things from Blood Moon to Cranial Platings to Leyline of Sanctity (with a little work).
This means that if you can properly identify your metagame you can have a pretty good match-up. Take a look at that 10th place list from GP Detroit. 4 main-deck wraths, 7 main-deck exile effects, 8 main-deck land destruction spells. That's knowing your meta.
I think the problem is that we have to choose what decks we want to improve our match-up against and choose cards accordingly. It's a very flexible shell.
I've been running two Flooded Grove and I generally like it. It's very rare for it to be dead since I'm only running 3 mono-R sources currently. I'm on a single Mountain now that I expect Ghost Quarter to be less common with Eldrazi and Tron not being a large force.
Thinking about it, the only double-G spells I run are Obstinate Baloth and Scapeshift. There are some cases where I want to cast two green spells in a single turn, but it's not too common. Maybe one should be a Cascade Bluffs.
A swinging pendulum feels like it can mean one of two things:
Obviously, we'll be somewhere in between. We'll have a suite of decks of various power levels and even the lower power ones can show up for a week if they have a good pilot and get lucky. I just hope that power level puts the top decks relatively close together and there is a variety. We'll have to wait for the next event to know, but with how interactive the decks are I expect it's more of the first.
I'm glad Anticipate works though. I've always felt a little underwhelmed by it and found I wanted Peer mostly so I can dig for Scapeshift. There's nothing more frustrating than digging through half your deck and still not finding the win.
Two questions about your list:
Why the Cascade Bluffs? Is it really necessary? The only double-red spells I see are Anger of the Gods and Shatterstorm and I've had no real trouble ramping those.
Anticipate over Peer Through Depths: Is the selection worth seeing only 3 cards? I've been preferring Peer Through Depths lately.
Looks like he won the =28&start_date=2016-04-09&end_date=2016-04-10&city=&order_1=finish&limit=32&t_num=1&action=Show+Decks]Star City Games Classic. No idea how many people where there. There was also a RUGw BtL list at 7th. I had a hunch that Scapeshift would be good in this meta.
His deck is strange. It looks like it's trying to play primarily a combo game. Lots of ramp and go straight for the combo with 4 Valakut, 4 Prismatic Omen. It's still impossible to get the combo off before turn 4 as far as I can calculate, so it's not terribly fast. I suppose that's what the limited disruption suite is there for: to last until turn 4 or 5.
I'm not sure if it's a great strategy. If people know what's going on there are ways to fight it, but it is a very hard combo to stop since it's a single sorcery and lands.
I'll probably go back to a Elspeth and a more controlling UW Control deck, but first I need to see how my local meta settles out and whether I should invest in a playset of Ancestral Visions.
This is probably one of the best comparisons I've seen. They have similar costs and serve very similar roles in very similar decks. Keranos tends to do more with his lightning-bolt ability which is way better than Jace's second ability.
If this Jace were just four mana instead of five I could see him in a slow blue deck since his +1 is actually quite reasonable due to the scry (probably 1.5 cards worth) and he forces the opponent to react because he threatens getting to the ultimate in 4 turns if unchecked.