4-3 match record in GP Detroit (Team Unified). I played pretty tight the entire day, beating some tough matchups... but dropped a few that I felt are reasonably good matchups.
2-1 vs Mardu Pyromancer
After dropping G1 I was holding ET in Game 2 to deal with tokens at the most opportune time when my opponent cast Ensnaring Bridge. Built some critical mass, got Islandwalk online and bounced Bridge. G3 my opponent mulled to 5, then played T2 Pyromancer... which I Gut Shot. Pretty easy victory from there.
2-0 vs. Humans
I played things. MoW did stuff. *shrug*
1-2 vs. Humans
This one bummed me out...opponent got down double Aruik Champion when I had double MoW in hand. I dealt over 40 damage to him but he gained about 30 life, living long enough to find Reflector Mages, etc. I was hoping to just race with a wide board, but about 1 turn too slow.
2-1 vs. Mill
G1 Spreading Seas helped keep my opponent off black, standing cards in hand long enough to get in under Bridge. G2 I had lethal on board when he cast Darkness. 3 turns in a row. After only drawing about 15 cards in his deck. I was a little salty. G3 I kept him off black again and got in.
2-1 vs. Scapeshift
After getting wrecked G1 I played incredibly patient G2 & especially G3. I let 2 Angers resolve, holding my 2 Negates just slowing playing out a threat at a time, holding up mana and getting in with Mutavault. At 3 life my opponent was priced into trying back to back Scapeshifts on his turn. I Negated both.
BYE - our opponents were a no-show. *shrug*
1-2 vs. Bridgevine
G1 got wrecked by Bridge tokens. G2 I controlled the GY and Vialed in Tidebinder to deal with Gorgodon before slamming MoW. G3 he got off 2 Vengevine on t2 and found a 3rd 2 turns later. I had a pretty good, lord-heavy hand with Vial... but couldn't keep up with the pressure. Is what it is.
1-2 vs. Burn
Salty about this one too. Dropped both G2 & G3 with lethal on board both games and never finding 1 single piece of interaction in any of the 3 games. This is a matchup I generally feel very good about, especially with 3 maindeck Tidebinder & Spell Pierce.
All in all I was happy I took 3x Tidebinder main over Harbinger. Spell Pierce was OK against Mill and in 1 or 2 specific situations, but I boarded it out a lot. I dodged Tron/Affinity/KCI etc, making Ceremonious Rejection look terrible. I would have *much* rather had Dispel or some other form of interaction. Never brought in Damping Sphere either. I was running 2 maindeck Kopala to try and protect Phimage... but it didn't really do anything and I would have rather had 2nd Kira, Clique or pretty much any 2 drop.
It feels really weird to call this Grixis Control with no Cryptics... but I'm sorta blending R/U TiTi with Grixis & Mardu strategies. Maybe this belongs in Deck Creation or some TiTi thread someplace. *shrug*
Sooo... moving away from Cryptic in favor of hand-destruction, ala Mardu, hoping to stick an early TiTi. Between Faithless & Scour I have no problems turning through my deck and filling the GY, which is good for Snappy/KCommand shenanigans and sorta fuels Bedlam Reveler the same way it would Tasigur. It's going to be a little slower (no T2 Rev), but the upside is maybe worth it. Cryptic was sorta my concession to this strategy; can't have 4cmc spells in my hand and play Rev.
On the up side the interaction between Awoken Horrow & Snappy/Rev is pretty much straight gas. I was kinda worried about not being able to refill my hand without something like Ancestral Vision or Think Twice, but so far the incremental card gain has been solid.
Main deck Surgical probably looks weird... but I think it's justified in the current meta with Bridgevine being the current hotness, along with the likes of Mardu, Hollow One, U/W Control & KCI all being Tier 1 or 2. Plus it's a "free" spell for TiTi and prowess enabler for Rev. In bad matchups I can always loot/brutality it away.
Being on the maindeck Surgical plan I opted for Ghost Quarter, running 1 main and 3 in board to hit Tron. The board needs a lot of work, but tried to shore up matchups with Burn and other hypo aggro decks like Elves, Affinity, Infect, etc.
So far in testing I'm enjoying it and having moderate success... but man does it feel strange not having Cryptic. Not really sure if I should still have Thought Scour filing my GY with no Logic Knot/Tasigur, etc or if I should maybe switch to Opt/Serum Visions. I guess I'm just having a hard time completely breaking from my normal Grixis Control roots; it's ingrained in me that Thought Scour is criminally underrated by the MTG community at large lol.
I was somewhat underwhelmed with Tropical on my first go-around as well, but Trickster has been very helpful with pushing through damage, and Shapers' Sanctuary really shores up the midrange and control matchups. To be honest, it will take a massive influx of specifically Blood Moon decks for me to go back to mono-U. I'm pretty firmly convinced Tropical Fish is the more efficient deck right now.
Ive used Shapers Sanctuary in other decks (like Allies) and been very impressed with it.
Sticking with mono-blue. I tried tropical a while ago and wasn't super impressed. I'm not opposed to trying it out again, but would need to finagle some of the lands since my teammates are on Bant Company & Lantern. Looking over Rothgars list I just can't picture myself playing without MoW.
That said, it's all on the table for me right now as I test the crap outa everything. Right now I feel like I can tweak the deck to deal with aggressive threats or to deal with combo/control, but I'm struggling to walk the middle and seem to wind up just losing to both when I try to do it all. I'm still like 50/50 or 60/40 but definitely not putting up the results I'm looking for. I've got about a month left to prep and if I don't figure this out soon I might just pickup my Grixis Control deck.
I brought back and old strategy earlier today on Twitch with some 8-Seas Merfolk in Modern! I didn't end up with a great result (2-3), but the deck definitely showed potential. Off-screen, I crushed a B/W Eldrazi deck, on-screen, I beat Burn and Scapeshift....lost to W/U Control, Goblins, and Humans in the league.
Please don't hesitate to like, share, comment, and/or subscribe to my channel for more content like this. Thank you all for your time and support so far!
I was running 7-seas for a minute, before trying out Relic and a few other 1-drops sans Cursecatcher. I was actually relatively happy with the build, especially since it added to my MoW devotion. The main reason I moved away is because I'm prepping for a Team Modern event and I'm expecting fewer decks soft to mana-screw. I definitely think the build has legs in the current meta though. It's pretty clear we are not as explosive as some of the other decks out there, so having another way to slow the game down by a turn or two while allowing us to develop some critical mass is pretty good.
That's me at the 8:40 mark vs. Saffron Olive. On the other end of the spectrum got rolled by Nikachu in the mirror. Had super slow hands with Lord of Atlantis stuck in hand and he had everything rolling. Ah well.
Totally unrelated but I *really* wanna test Halimar Depths. Part of the theory behind Conclave has been that it's come-into-play-tapped drawback is partially offset by our lack of T1 plays. And one of my biggest complaints with Fish is it needs more card draw. HD isn't exactly card draw, but it does sorta filter and set up our draws. The problem is I can't figure out a reasonable way to shuffle my deck if the cards on top suck. I really don't wanna add fetches due to loss of life. I suspect this is a dead end, but figured I'd at least ask and see if anybody else has a brilliant idea for how we could potentially make the card work for us.
Reej is just too slow for me right now. When it sticks with a handful of fish it's awesome, but tapping out and watching it die to removal feels really really bad. That's part of why I've been on the Phimage plan for a while; it's a more aggressive quasi-lord that can also double up on MoW tokens, mimic a Trickster, draw a card or ambush an opposing threat.
I've been running 2x Kopala as my only 3 drops in order to at least tax targeted removal. It's definitely not as good as Kira in grindier matchups like Mardu and I'm considering maybe a split.
One downside is that playing more 2-drops leaves us a bit softer to EE, but if I'm going to run a 3cmc card I want something that has an immediate impact on board state. Whether you reach for watertrap weaver or go w/ something like Clique I just think you want more immediate interaction. I might feel different if we had a playable 1-drop at the moment, but we know we're already starting relatively slow in terms of board state, so only being able to commit 1 creature a turn without holding up mana for Spell Pierce/Dismemeber etc. just doesn't feel good to me.
I mean, let's say we don't have a vial hand. T1 we commit nothing to the board. T2 silvergill, lord or whatever. T3 we play Reej and it get's killed. That means untapping on T4 we have exactly 1 creature on the board; possibly only a 2/1. Juxtaposed to decks like Humans, Elves, Affinity, Hollow One, Spirits, etc that is just waaaaay to slow. And against big mana, combo & control we're generally better off at least playing another 2 drop and holding up 1 mana for Spell Pierce.
Basically what I'm saying is that Reej is best against slow decks with no interaction. Then we can drop it on T3 and explode on T4 and maybe have lethal on T5. I'll wait here while you guys give me a list of all the decks we face that match that description; slow and non-interactive....
Spell Snare is outstanding for me in Grixis Control. Would never play without it. It's especially great on the draw. But it works because the desk had so many other tools to flesh out the denial/removal suit. I can't help but think it's too narrow for fish.
That said ill check out some of your content and see if I'm swayed. *shrug*
I just beat Saffron Olive 2-0 in a friendly league. Was testing out some different configurations and he was on his elf beats deck from a recent Instant Deck Tech. Dude exploded out of the gates FAST and I was waaaay behind both games, but he didn't have trample and MoW got me there.
It's no exaggeration to say that MoW has won me 95% of my recent games. The card is soooooo good right now it's ridiculous. I've been running 2x Phimage just to capitalize on the tokens. I don't even care if it dies to Mutagentic Growth.
Side topic... but do we still need 4x Relic in board?? It's nice in control matchups, but not strictly necessary. In most instances I'm happy staying creature dense and just playing around wraths. Dredge isn't really a thing atm. It's good vs. Hollow One... but bounce effects do the trick. I'm seriously thinking about trimming it back to 2x Relics. Or maybe trying out 2x Relic and 2x Surgicals??
2-0 vs. R/W Tempered Steel
Opponent had land issues and fish did fish things.
2-0 vs. Charge Counter Combo
Played through T3 & T4 Sundering Titans thanks to Vial in G1. G2 Rejection kept rampy things off the board.
1-2 vs. Pox
Got locked under Bridge both losses. Kinda frustrating it was only a 2 of in his deck and G3 I saw multiple Spell Pierce, Rejections and an Echoing Truth... but discard picked me a part and 2x Bontu's Last Reckoning and an EE were enough to slow me down long enough for him to find his Bridge. Ah well.
2-0 vs. Mardu Tokens
At one point I cast Trickster 3 turns in a row to lock down Reveler, followed up by MoW with 13 devotion on the board. Won the battle of the token armies lol
2-0 vs. G/W Company
Solid tempo plan, leading into triple MoW did the trick.
Soooo... the 19 Lands was actually an accident lol. I was trying to squeeze in 1x Sea's Claim mostly just because I hate not having a T1 play and I'm kinda a tempo plan. But the games I didn't have a 1 drop didn't really bother me, so it'll come back out.
I have zero hard removal other than Gut Shot for Infect/Affinity/Elves. Based on comments from the community skipping on Dismember sounds bad... but hasn't been a problem for me yet. Will keep testing.
In place of Reej I was trying out 2x Phimage and hoping the 2x Kopala offered some quasi-protection for it. Phimage was fantastic for me and I even liked the Kopala/Spell Pierce combo most of the time. In grindier matches like Mardu Tokens it definitely would have been better to have Kira, but I feel good enough about that matchup I'm not overly concerned.
Master of Waves was the unquestioned superstar, winning me every single game. At one point I was able to Vial in a 2nd MoW and Phimage to surprise kill my opponent with only a handful of Elemental tokens.
The biggest problem for me is obviously the side-board. Going to stick with the tempo plan for now with no hard removal and see where it gets me, but I'm super light on a counterspell package and that feels bad. Probably need to trim 1 Rejection and maybe Clique or something but I'm struggling to decide what to bring in. I'm still not a fan of Deprive, so maybe back to Unified Will for me. I've long been against Remand in Fish decks, but with this ultra creature-tempo build it might be time to give it another shot. I'd also like to find room for 1-2 more ET, but not sure were to fit them in.
I get Cursecatcher being out of favor, but I am really struggling with the idea of no 1-drop other than Vial. Sure, maybe you counter or kill something. Maybe Conclave enters tapped. But I still hate this feeling that Im starting slow and not advancing my board state.
Burr what's the alternative? 2 Relic maindeck? Serum Visions/Opt? I almost wanna try Halimar Depths in place of Conclave to setup my next few draws, but without fetches no way to shuffle bad cards away. I dunno...
What do you guys think about going back to Gut Shot SB? Humans is definatelly the deck to beat and Affinity and Elves are still our archenemies. I'm playing 2 Gut Shots in my sideboard and it's been doing VERY well (beyong my expectations rly).
I love Gut Shot. It hits a ton of targets. My problem has always been trying to make room for it.
Holding off a board wipe or high impact spell for 1 extra turn while getting in an additional 3-5 pts of damage could be enough to win the game. Its also frequently a more efficient use of mana to play Cursecarcher early as opposed to holding up mana when we want to keep playing creatures.
Having a 2cmc creature with flash is a new element that at times allows us to do both.
Countering something like Ugin or Summoners Pact with Spell Pierce could also be back breaking.
I honestly havent made up my mind yet and am looking forward to hearing more results.
2-1 vs Mardu Pyromancer
After dropping G1 I was holding ET in Game 2 to deal with tokens at the most opportune time when my opponent cast Ensnaring Bridge. Built some critical mass, got Islandwalk online and bounced Bridge. G3 my opponent mulled to 5, then played T2 Pyromancer... which I Gut Shot. Pretty easy victory from there.
2-0 vs. Humans
I played things. MoW did stuff. *shrug*
1-2 vs. Humans
This one bummed me out...opponent got down double Aruik Champion when I had double MoW in hand. I dealt over 40 damage to him but he gained about 30 life, living long enough to find Reflector Mages, etc. I was hoping to just race with a wide board, but about 1 turn too slow.
2-1 vs. Mill
G1 Spreading Seas helped keep my opponent off black, standing cards in hand long enough to get in under Bridge. G2 I had lethal on board when he cast Darkness. 3 turns in a row. After only drawing about 15 cards in his deck. I was a little salty. G3 I kept him off black again and got in.
2-1 vs. Scapeshift
After getting wrecked G1 I played incredibly patient G2 & especially G3. I let 2 Angers resolve, holding my 2 Negates just slowing playing out a threat at a time, holding up mana and getting in with Mutavault. At 3 life my opponent was priced into trying back to back Scapeshifts on his turn. I Negated both.
BYE - our opponents were a no-show. *shrug*
1-2 vs. Bridgevine
G1 got wrecked by Bridge tokens. G2 I controlled the GY and Vialed in Tidebinder to deal with Gorgodon before slamming MoW. G3 he got off 2 Vengevine on t2 and found a 3rd 2 turns later. I had a pretty good, lord-heavy hand with Vial... but couldn't keep up with the pressure. Is what it is.
1-2 vs. Burn
Salty about this one too. Dropped both G2 & G3 with lethal on board both games and never finding 1 single piece of interaction in any of the 3 games. This is a matchup I generally feel very good about, especially with 3 maindeck Tidebinder & Spell Pierce.
All in all I was happy I took 3x Tidebinder main over Harbinger. Spell Pierce was OK against Mill and in 1 or 2 specific situations, but I boarded it out a lot. I dodged Tron/Affinity/KCI etc, making Ceremonious Rejection look terrible. I would have *much* rather had Dispel or some other form of interaction. Never brought in Damping Sphere either. I was running 2 maindeck Kopala to try and protect Phimage... but it didn't really do anything and I would have rather had 2nd Kira, Clique or pretty much any 2 drop.
Ah well.
3 Snapcaster Mage
4 Thing In The Ice
4 Bedlam Reveler
Spells: 28
4 Thought Scour
4 Faithless Looting
3 Inqusition of Kozilek
2 Thoughtseize
2 Collective Brutality
3 Surgical Extraction
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Fatal Push
3 Kolaghan's Command
1 Rise // Fall
3 Polluted Delta
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Scalding Tarn
2 Watery Grave
2 Blood Crypt
1 Drowned Catacomb
1 Dragonskull Summit
1 Creeping Tar Pit
3 Swamp
2 Mountain
1 Island
1 Ghost Quarter
2 Rakdos Charm
3 Sun Droplet
2 Gut Shot
3 Ghost Quarter
2 Anger of the Gods
1 Collective Brutality
2 Damping Sphere
Sooo... moving away from Cryptic in favor of hand-destruction, ala Mardu, hoping to stick an early TiTi. Between Faithless & Scour I have no problems turning through my deck and filling the GY, which is good for Snappy/KCommand shenanigans and sorta fuels Bedlam Reveler the same way it would Tasigur. It's going to be a little slower (no T2 Rev), but the upside is maybe worth it. Cryptic was sorta my concession to this strategy; can't have 4cmc spells in my hand and play Rev.
On the up side the interaction between Awoken Horrow & Snappy/Rev is pretty much straight gas. I was kinda worried about not being able to refill my hand without something like Ancestral Vision or Think Twice, but so far the incremental card gain has been solid.
Main deck Surgical probably looks weird... but I think it's justified in the current meta with Bridgevine being the current hotness, along with the likes of Mardu, Hollow One, U/W Control & KCI all being Tier 1 or 2. Plus it's a "free" spell for TiTi and prowess enabler for Rev. In bad matchups I can always loot/brutality it away.
Being on the maindeck Surgical plan I opted for Ghost Quarter, running 1 main and 3 in board to hit Tron. The board needs a lot of work, but tried to shore up matchups with Burn and other hypo aggro decks like Elves, Affinity, Infect, etc.
So far in testing I'm enjoying it and having moderate success... but man does it feel strange not having Cryptic. Not really sure if I should still have Thought Scour filing my GY with no Logic Knot/Tasigur, etc or if I should maybe switch to Opt/Serum Visions. I guess I'm just having a hard time completely breaking from my normal Grixis Control roots; it's ingrained in me that Thought Scour is criminally underrated by the MTG community at large lol.
That said, it's all on the table for me right now as I test the crap outa everything. Right now I feel like I can tweak the deck to deal with aggressive threats or to deal with combo/control, but I'm struggling to walk the middle and seem to wind up just losing to both when I try to do it all. I'm still like 50/50 or 60/40 but definitely not putting up the results I'm looking for. I've got about a month left to prep and if I don't figure this out soon I might just pickup my Grixis Control deck.
https://www.mtggoldfish.com/articles/much-abrew-beatdown-elves-modern
I've been running 2x Kopala as my only 3 drops in order to at least tax targeted removal. It's definitely not as good as Kira in grindier matchups like Mardu and I'm considering maybe a split.
One downside is that playing more 2-drops leaves us a bit softer to EE, but if I'm going to run a 3cmc card I want something that has an immediate impact on board state. Whether you reach for watertrap weaver or go w/ something like Clique I just think you want more immediate interaction. I might feel different if we had a playable 1-drop at the moment, but we know we're already starting relatively slow in terms of board state, so only being able to commit 1 creature a turn without holding up mana for Spell Pierce/Dismemeber etc. just doesn't feel good to me.
I mean, let's say we don't have a vial hand. T1 we commit nothing to the board. T2 silvergill, lord or whatever. T3 we play Reej and it get's killed. That means untapping on T4 we have exactly 1 creature on the board; possibly only a 2/1. Juxtaposed to decks like Humans, Elves, Affinity, Hollow One, Spirits, etc that is just waaaaay to slow. And against big mana, combo & control we're generally better off at least playing another 2 drop and holding up 1 mana for Spell Pierce.
Basically what I'm saying is that Reej is best against slow decks with no interaction. Then we can drop it on T3 and explode on T4 and maybe have lethal on T5. I'll wait here while you guys give me a list of all the decks we face that match that description; slow and non-interactive....
That said ill check out some of your content and see if I'm swayed. *shrug*
It's no exaggeration to say that MoW has won me 95% of my recent games. The card is soooooo good right now it's ridiculous. I've been running 2x Phimage just to capitalize on the tokens. I don't even care if it dies to Mutagentic Growth.
2-0 vs. R/W Tempered Steel
Opponent had land issues and fish did fish things.
2-0 vs. Charge Counter Combo
Played through T3 & T4 Sundering Titans thanks to Vial in G1. G2 Rejection kept rampy things off the board.
1-2 vs. Pox
Got locked under Bridge both losses. Kinda frustrating it was only a 2 of in his deck and G3 I saw multiple Spell Pierce, Rejections and an Echoing Truth... but discard picked me a part and 2x Bontu's Last Reckoning and an EE were enough to slow me down long enough for him to find his Bridge. Ah well.
2-0 vs. Mardu Tokens
At one point I cast Trickster 3 turns in a row to lock down Reveler, followed up by MoW with 13 devotion on the board. Won the battle of the token armies lol
2-0 vs. G/W Company
Solid tempo plan, leading into triple MoW did the trick.
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Merfolk Trickster
4 Harbinger of the Tides
4 Master of the Pearl Trident
4 Lord of Atlantis
2 Phantasmal Image
2 Kopala, Warden of Waves
4 Master of Waves
13 Spells
4 Aether Vial
1 Sea's Claim
4 Spreading Seas
4 Spell Pierce
4 Mutavault
2 Cavern of Souls
1 Oboro, Palace in the Clouds
1 Minamo, School at Waters Edge
11 Island
2 Gut Shot
2 Echoing Truth
2 Dispel
1 Vendilion Clique
4 Ceremonious Rejection
4 Relic of Projenitus
Soooo... the 19 Lands was actually an accident lol. I was trying to squeeze in 1x Sea's Claim mostly just because I hate not having a T1 play and I'm kinda a tempo plan. But the games I didn't have a 1 drop didn't really bother me, so it'll come back out.
I have zero hard removal other than Gut Shot for Infect/Affinity/Elves. Based on comments from the community skipping on Dismember sounds bad... but hasn't been a problem for me yet. Will keep testing.
In place of Reej I was trying out 2x Phimage and hoping the 2x Kopala offered some quasi-protection for it. Phimage was fantastic for me and I even liked the Kopala/Spell Pierce combo most of the time. In grindier matches like Mardu Tokens it definitely would have been better to have Kira, but I feel good enough about that matchup I'm not overly concerned.
Master of Waves was the unquestioned superstar, winning me every single game. At one point I was able to Vial in a 2nd MoW and Phimage to surprise kill my opponent with only a handful of Elemental tokens.
The biggest problem for me is obviously the side-board. Going to stick with the tempo plan for now with no hard removal and see where it gets me, but I'm super light on a counterspell package and that feels bad. Probably need to trim 1 Rejection and maybe Clique or something but I'm struggling to decide what to bring in. I'm still not a fan of Deprive, so maybe back to Unified Will for me. I've long been against Remand in Fish decks, but with this ultra creature-tempo build it might be time to give it another shot. I'd also like to find room for 1-2 more ET, but not sure were to fit them in.
Burr what's the alternative? 2 Relic maindeck? Serum Visions/Opt? I almost wanna try Halimar Depths in place of Conclave to setup my next few draws, but without fetches no way to shuffle bad cards away. I dunno...
Holding off a board wipe or high impact spell for 1 extra turn while getting in an additional 3-5 pts of damage could be enough to win the game. Its also frequently a more efficient use of mana to play Cursecarcher early as opposed to holding up mana when we want to keep playing creatures.
Having a 2cmc creature with flash is a new element that at times allows us to do both.
Countering something like Ugin or Summoners Pact with Spell Pierce could also be back breaking.
I honestly havent made up my mind yet and am looking forward to hearing more results.