It is important that we look at both a cards floor and its ceiling. (which is why most of us are willing to run temporal mastery without a second thought, such a good ceiling)
Although it does seem appealing to try and get extra mileage out of halimar depths, your actually considering putting a land from play back into your hand. Granted it's so we can (hopefully) start blocking, which is a good thing. I'm sure we have all felt the pain of missing our turn 4 island, but that is essentially what this god is asking of us. Setting ourselves back a turn is not usually something I set out to do so when I look at the "pay 4: draw a card", it looks really bad to me... more like "pay 4: miss a land drop, ohh yeah and as an upside I guess you can draw a card and maybe block, if your lucky".
Don't get me wrong I am going to test him just like the rest of you all will, but I am suspecting right now that his ceiling wont be enough to make his floor worth it.
On the play: start 7 cards
Turn one- play island (possibly serum visions): 6 cards
Turn two- draw card, play island, play mine: 5 cards in hand
Turn three- draw two cards, play island, play Kefnet: still 5 cards in hand
Turn four- draw two cards, swing with kefnet then play island, or make land drop then activate the draw only if you need to block
On the play: start 7 cards
Turn one- play island (possibly serum visions): 6 cards
Turn two- draw card, play island, probably hold up remand: 6 cards in hand
Turn three- draw card, play island, pass with mana up for dictate, end-step dictate: 6, then 5
Turn four- draw two cards, play island, cast kefnet: still 5
Turn five- draw two cards, swing with kefnet then cast a warp, or make land drop then activate the draw only if you need to block
Mine turns him on faster than dictate so if he turns out to be worth it we may all be playing more mines and less dictates
The way I look at it he is just about impossible to turn on without an engine in play and that's my big beef with him. I think it makes him win more. If his draw ability didn't set us back a turn it would go along way to convincing me otherwise, but as is, its a drawback more than a benefit.
Because in a game where your hand has been stripped that activated ability is completely irrelevant right?
When I have I fat goyf and and even fatter deaths shadow breathing down my neck, paying 4 mana to try and dig for an answer is not where we want to be. But I do have to point out this reinforces my earlier arguement about this card being win more because the hands where you have enough breathing room to waste 4 mana (and probably most of a turn) looking for answers are the hands where your opponent is durdling and thus this is still a win more card.
Kefnet is a trap. His drawback makes him unreliable, running him will only make us more susceptible to getting our hands ripped apart by targetedhandhate. So why would we want to make our matchup worse vs such a large chunk of the meta? So what if he swings for 5 he will never pull us through a grindy matchup.
I can't even count the number of hands Ive won with only one engine in play less than 4 cards in hand.
The only way I can see to make him more playable would be to go back to playing the tower, but that card also suffered from the same problem Kefnet does. It won't help you catch up from being behind, but both are good when everything is going great... I'm sorry to tell you all but that makes this a win more card and that means we can't run it.
I am re-thinking Thassa - with 4 Temporal Masteries she might be better than I imagine, dies to nothing normally, I was just never willing to give up a interaction slot for her Sell me on Thasa - those of you who advocate for her
Every time I cut Thassa, I end up putting her back in the main shortly after. She does too many different things for us
-Let's start with the obvious: She is an indestructable (sometimes unblockable) 5/5 beater that your opponents will fear.
-Her scry sets us up to miracle a little bit more often than we would otherwise, and helps to drastically improve the quality of our draws. Remember this triggers every turn for no additional mana. Because of this we can count this mana-free scry every turn as about .5 of an engine. So by adding her you can effectively go up to 6.5 engines
-The two above benefits make her really, really good in grindy matchups
-Once we slip into extra turns, this scry becomes even better because we can start pitching everything that doesn't say take an extra turn. So at this point in the game her scry is worth closer to .75 (possibly more) of an engine, since you will be pitching most of what you see and only leaving it on top if it says, take an extra turn. (unless your running shy on lands while going off but hey she fixes that too)
-I have caught many an opponent off guard by flashing in a suprise dictate and then blocking with what they thought was a harmless enchantment.
-She swings for 5 and can very quickly close out a game even if you draw her late. Unlike a late game Jace which needs several turns to do his thing and your going to need to use a reshuffle (which I don't even have in my 75) if you want to ult him.
-Sometimes (not often) they will have untapped blockers for your 6/6 and you will want to use her "makes things unblockable" ability to close the game out earlier. better than having to swing into their blockers until they are all dead, or you finally draw that gigadrowse or cryptic you've been digging for.
-Sometimes (more often) she will let your Snaps sneak in for 2 through a bunch of souls tokens and whatnot. You can convince people to burn their removal on Snap when they should be trying to save it for our 6/6.
-When opponents see her as one of your win cons game one they will be encouraged to side out destroy effects since they are dead against her, clearing the way for your Thing in the Ice to come in from the side and take over game 2.
-I have had opponents decide to find ways to stop my primary win-con so those games our only hope are our backups like Thassa. So far Meddling Mage naming Part the Waterveil was bad news for me since i couldn't find a card to bounce it. And I have also had people target part with the powerful 1-2 combo-punch of Thoughtseize into Surgical. So having a reliable plan B is a good idea. Hands like that are not auto-losses because I know I could draw into her later and still win.
I personally think she is a must include and I can't seem to cut her since she does double duty as both engine and win con. I will admit she is bad vs certain match-ups and I do side her out for additional interaction against some decks. Test her out for about 10 hands against a variety of opponents and see if you can also find good use for her in here, you might be suprised at what she actually does for you.
i tested delver quite a bit and damn he is sexy in turns.
maybe someone else should try it aswell
I tested it a couple of FNMs ago and it seemed to work out pretty well (which is why i mentioned him). The additional upside of playing it on turn 1 gave my opponents something to focus on besides the fact that I was going to combo them out even if they dealt with it. Watching them have the small victory of killing my first delver gave me smiles because i knew i would likely draw 2-3 more since we see so much of our library when comboing.
I wasn't expecting to kill them with the first delver anyways but the hands where they weren't able to answer it were over very fast. Overall i gave him a thumbs up but i never found the right cards to cut for him
Has Dragonlord Ojutai ever been tested in this deck?
yes
Any win-con that costs 5 mana competes with Time Warp. Because why would I cast Ojutai when I could be casting actual time warps? the same can be said for any X-mana win con in this deck. Our mana is usually pretty tight if we plan on never passing back to our opponent from turn 5 on. That means when turn 5 comes our wincons need to either be out in playalready or cheap (like planting a turn 6 delver and then continuing to warp until they lose to the 3/2 flyer).
This makes cards like Keranos, or Elspeth unusable even though they can absolutely win games all by themselves if handed several consecutive turns. So whenever considering powerful win cons, just realize that it helps if they are both be impervious to most removal and extremely mana efficient. So they had better win you the game effectively that turn if they are going to cost enough to compete with our warps.
On top of that the two current popular win-cons of Jace and Thassa both have strong synergy with helping us to go off in the first place as well as acting as secondary win cons by themselves, its hard for Ojutai or any other card to compete with that two-fold benefit. Find me a win-con that also does double duty in some other way and I will gladly test it.
We do have the unique option of advertising that we need to use our graveyard to win... and then siding out things like Temporal Tresspass and our reshuffle effects to try to get them to side in dead cards like rest in peace. but this would mean running a slightly sub-par mainboard and I really like that we win most of our game 1's due to the main being extremely efficient vs a diverse meta. I don't think the off chance of catching them off guard game two by running a slightly less efficient game 1 deck is as good as switching from a xexen style mainboard to something that will catch them off guard game two. like siding out the combo and siding in 15 creatures or some other transformative shenanigins.
I will try this at a local FNM sometime and see how it goes.
"I agree with Tanarax, although I don't think of Darksteel Citadel as a useful colorless-producing land for the deck. I think a blue land, Geier Reach Sanitarium, Radiant Fountain or Gemstone Caverns are preferable." -Pixeleen
-I think gemstone caverns are only awesome like 3% of hands, that's not enough for me to stop running my other utility lands in those slots
-I think that geier reach sanitarium is a trap, it costs you 3 mana and doesnt actually net you an extra card. It only improves card quality. The only hands it will help you anyways are ones where your opponent is already durdling really badly and thus its a win more card.
-Radiant fountain is absoluteley worth running, I just feel its not as good as what the otherutilitylands do for us
When I first tested Darksteel Citadel I thought it would fall somewhere in between "oh how cute" and "win more". I played with it a little online and then I took it to an FNM with a citadel in the list. Its actual effects are multi-fold. The obvious is that it cannot ever be stopped by the terminater or pushed around by bullies, which is why when I initially tested it I expected it to be a win more card and that I would end up cutting after proving my theory through testing.
But since I also run a singeton Thassa, and I try and never let them see inkmoth nexus game one (if possible). Most people think that my win conditions are all indestructable. which means they pull out everything that isn't named Path to exile. Meanwhile I'm siding in three Things which are absolutely not indestructable and love taking over the game if they dont get picked on by bullies.
So yes even though the corner case of them actually being indestructable doesnt help that much. where they really shine is what they do to people who just lost to either a 5/5 indestructable or a 6/6 indestructale when they are making their choices of what to side out. They have a secondary effect of playing mind games with your opponent which help protect thing and that's why it has stayed in.
Remember we are fairly fringe and most of our opponents will only have a rough idea of how our deck actually works, so they will misplay and make sub-par choices. Anything we can do to help them make the wrong choices is good for us.
"First question: without searching through this and the various other Turns threads, has there been much consideration of Ghost Quarter or Tec Edge? Seems good against opposing creature lands that are a little harder to deal with (won't get tapped down by cryptic most of the time, unless opponent makes a mistake)." -gigasturtz
Since we have to get to 9 mana to win the game off of part the waterveil, using a Ghost Quarter or a Tec Edge to answer an opposing manland is just not as good at tapping it down with gigadrowse or just swinging into it with your 6/6. Remember that using it before your cast the awakened part sets us back a turn and two cards in the form of a land (to replace the ghost quarter) and a time warp effect (to keep going off while they are still tapped down). This is not as good as just letting them throw their manland under your bus to buy them a turn, which only sets you back by one card (a time warp effect) so its more efficient. And by the time you get to awaken your land, you have usually (like 90% of hands) had several chances to tap all of theirs lands and creatures down with gigadrowses so its not going to help very often anyways.
And we cant afford for any of our lands to enter tapped so avoid putting normally good cards like Faerie Conclave in because they are a trap. The new fetchable cycling duals are not for our deck for the same reason. I play the white splash and I have tested both two Temples and then later a one of Collonade and a one of Tango but we cannot afford for our turn 5 land drop to enter tapped most hands. In fact having any lands enter tapped felt really bad turns 2 though 5 but seemed not as horrible on turn 1 or after turn 5. I found they weren't worth the stumbling on mana that they cause during the most critical turns of the game so now I run 2 Filterlands.
extraplanar lens I tried without and didn't like it.Being able to start going off turn four with a warp or aeons is a big deal.Makes the buyback for aeons,casting ugin,and warping with counterspell backup easier.
On this similar tangent has anyone tried running a little heavy on mine effects (like the full 8 set) and ran Simian Spirit Guide to cheat them out early? I posted previously on why I dont like Jace Beleren but cheating him out a turn early would fix all of those problems then he effectively becomes a howling mine with additional upside, and for that matter how about turn 4 Warps, turn 3 counter + bounce, Turn 8 awakening, sometimes using it on another spell so one can hold up mana for a counter ect..
We draw a serious amount of cards with this deck so the inherent card disadvantage one would incur from running simians would easily get drowned out by all the "draw a card" we have in our deck. This becomes especially true when cheating out mine effects a turn early, that first extra card we would draw will even out with the the card you burned.
I am planning on heading to an IQ this coming Sunday and since you all probably have way better advice than my local group of player since all they ever see is this deck from the opposite point of view. So please pick apart my choices and make suggestions as to how to improve them.
Have any of you testedcondescend? After getting locked out of the game by Mono-Blue-Tron a few times I decided to try it out one FNM. Ive been running it for a couple of weeks now and it feels pretty good so far. It is currently in place of snapcaster mage in what I have been calling "my 2 flex slots". You will notice the extra two counters in the main when playing aginst other combodecks. And the instant speed scry is pretty good even when you aren't getting mileage out of its Power Sink half. On the play it feels flat busted and even on the draw I have been catching plenty of opponents off guard who are just trying to play cards on curve when they know (or at least suspect) that they are in a race to win before I start comboing out. This card is very strong turns 2-4 which is where this deck always wants to have good quality interference available plus it helps set up our draws to establish our combo. The largest drawback Ive seen so far is that I can no longer flash in snapcater to block an already resolved Eidolon. And there's now only one way I can win game one. Which is pretty risky. I do miss running a one of Thassa.
Most matches my plan is to side in 3 Things, and relevent hate, while sometimes(if i need to lower my curve) siding out one Part. I have been tempted to run a super spicy Psychic Spiral as a diversion-wincon for just game 1 (unless they don't see it, then it can stay in i guess) to incentivize them to bring in their Rest in Peace and Relic of Progenitus type hate. Which will be absolutely dead games 2 and 3 because I don't believe we need the reshuffle in this deck and if this list doesnt use Snapcasters, then I don't need a graveyard... at all. And any mind games I can play with them to convince them to bring in 2-4 dead cards from their side would be a serious bonus in my book. We all have the option of exploiting the transformational sideboard effect and if any of you have done this in the past I would love some tips on what did and didn't work out well.
I asked around both on here and with a few buddies and the best answer I got back about how to beat the new (Sam Black has been playing it for like 6 months so new is a relative term) lean mean Jund's Shadow that dominated Vancouver is Blessed Alliance. Thank you for your suggestions and please keep them coming.
With the new ban/unban coming soon, there's a lot of talk of unbanning jace, the mind sculptor . If that what really the case (and if it was, what a troll move from wotc for not including it in MM3), do you guys think it would be an autoinclude in our deck?
I was having this discussion with another regular at my local FNMs a couple of weeks ago we both agreed that even though jace, the mind sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic were easy "must bans" when modern was new. They are not as scary as they were back then. And if they were to unban either card, they would both immediately spawn a new deck in modern which would easily stabalize at at like 1-3% percent of the meta (modern miracles and esper-Batterskull), and certainly wouldn't become too large of a share of the meta and have to be removed
But Ive already taken out 3-drop Jace because it feel sooo bad to tap out for him on turn 3 against certain decks. Aggro will punish you for not casting exhaustion or holding up remand for the turn. He is basically a dead card against most combo decks because I refuse to tap out to cast him because casting him screams "you can go ahead and win now I'm not gonna counter anything". To be clear this has nothing to do with weather or not he is effective once hes cast, because I love what he does for us. He draws both players cards(check), He draws just me cards(check), He can do a pretty a good job of ulting twice for the mill-win(check). But if I'm too scared to cast him against enough of the meta that means hes a sideboard card at best.
So now you ask about a walker that costs one more mana? 4-drop Jace is a serious value-town kinda guy. But all of the problems I had with his younger version are even more exaggerated with him because now aggro will punish you for not casting exhaustion or holding up remand or Cryptic Command for the turn. And again combo with thank you for the free win if they have it in hand.
Now I do think if they unban it you will see one to two copies show up in sideboards because of what he can do for us vs midrange and control. But even that would be more a personal preference choice and not an auto include since we are already favored vs midrange and most types of control and hes not exactly an auto win causing silver bullet.
1)I have put in about 400-500 hands without any elixers or Day's and Ive only been decked I think 3 of those hands. All three hands were because an inability to close out the game through waaay to many paths for my cute one-of or awakened lands to handle. Or because I took a big hit and lost 1/3 of my library. That's a little less than 1% of my hands.
I value running an additional early interaction card instead, because I feel it has helped me far more than the <1% of times Ive lost due to decking. What really happens is every time I try to pluck a Gigadrowse or Exhaustion for elixers or Day's I find can't because I feel like running that 4th exhaustion or gigadrowse has saved me way more than 1% of my hands.
2)He looks good as an alternate win-con but Ive never tested him because I'm scared to cast him before I start going off. He draws all sorts of removal because people fear him and unless all their lands are tapped down I think I'd rather rely on Jace Beleren because he can never be answered by say a Terminate.
3)Don't forget to bounceMelira before you expect to get anywhere with Inkmoth Nexus. And if she becomes more popular you can always go up to a 2 Inkmoth and 1 Mikokoro package.
4)For a while I was running 4 dictates 2 mines AND 3 Visions. It was like putting pure jet-fuel in your library, I regularly 2-0'd Junk and Jund with it (even through all the discard), but it didn't help against burn or pump-infect at all, and it still didn't make the 8-rack match-up favorable so I have recently been shying away from running quite so much gas and am currently testing out a 3-set of condescend instead of the visions. Both have merits: mine is more reliable, vision is more explosive.
I'm not Xexen but hopefully a variety of opinions will help clear up why some of us do and don't do certain things
Deck thinning isn't much of a real thing, only reason to run fetch lands is to splash or the 1 off Temporal Trespass, which is very powerful.
I guess it makes much sense. And is it worthwhile to splash the Singleton Temporal Trespass? I haven't seen much lists with it, so I would take it as a no.
When I first put this deck together last summer I was able to get ahold of my playsets of Time Warp, Part the Waterveil, and 2 Temporal Trespass very easily. But I had trouble finding players with any Temporal Masteries for trade, so I played the deck without them for a while and used Temporal Trespass instead. It dug me out of several holes and being able to plant a mine/dictate and delve away most of my yard in the same turn gave me an out against board states no one should reasonably be able to win through. The advantage of either card is they can get us a very cheap turn spell which lets us put an engine in play that same turn. The real merit of the Trespass over the Mastery is that you can control when you cast it on the cheap(as long as you have survived into the mid or late game and your yard is big enough). Even though most of us have decided against using it there is nothing wrong with running a single Temporal Trespass, but I will advise against running any more than just the one because two in hand with no yard is a very bad place to be at.
Be warned you may want to side it out if you expect people to attack your yard with things like Rest in Peace
First time seeing it. With all respect I think he plays quite bad, still he gets lucky almost every game
i don't think he played that bad. but on the lucky factor.. damn he really is lucky ahah but i'd like to say that the stream shows how important temporal mastery is
a thing i'm noticing about these streams and lists is the lack of good sideboards, is it me or every sideboard seems very bad?
Since this deck is still a bit fringe, there are only a handful of people out there trying to find the right build for this deck. We are narrowing down the mainboard to the point that there is only about 3 flex slots in it now. I have to agree with Xexen that the list he used in vancouver is in a sweet spot, and his list at the very least is really close to where we want to be at. But our sideboards are still all over the place. Its probably a mixture of the fact that there are a few different splashes people are trying and that theres so few of us testing but we all disagree on what to bring in our 15. I personally splash white for the solid hatebaord it can bring to the table and because Glacial Fortress is un-choke-able with very little drawback.
I personally believe we (as a group) should use something akin to the elephant method to devise our sideboards, and (here is the hard part) include the splashes when we do so. This would finally let us know which splashes truly are the most optimal per the current meta, and would give us a better indication of how to adapt with it as it changes.
Since our mainboard is so tight (apart from Uw having a different landbase and Ur having bolt-snap-bolt as its wincon instead of part) and our sideboards are still a bit wild I think this deck is the perfect candidate for it.
Game 5: Mono U Tron
Karn (KARN!) and condescend are a ***** (I should know, I run Mono U Tron myself). Was surprised since most mono U tron lists I read up usually don't contain karn (and the primer argues against including him). It's hard to do anything when your mines and extra turns constantly get countered/returned to you, and playing the waiting game is a big no-no with UTron in general; they'll just overwhelm you with buckets of mana.
This isn't the first time I've heard someone here complain about the U-Tron matchup, but the few times I've played it, I don't really feel I had a problem. They don't hit Tron reliably, and their win conditions are relatively slow. Unlike regular Gx Tron, Tapping down their blue sources is a lot more important than tapping down tron pieces, as most of their colorless plays are not all that scary, besides Mindslaver/activate. Karn is definitely annoying though. It really does play out very much like playing against a blue control deck in most respects, from my experience.
My best bro plays UTron for Modern and I get spanked unless I bring in my Shadow of Doubt against him, even then I have to bounce a land to really guarantee a win. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but it's a tough matchup, it's almost like playing a mirror match (only your opponent packs better countermagic).
I don't like this particular matchup out of all the Trons. In fact, the rest are pretty easy. It's times when you draw poorly, or even average, and still the average UTron opening hand can stall out until they assemble their Lands. I guess the best measure would be to sideboard like you're playing against UxxControl.
See. I've been having problems with Gx Tron recently, even though a lot of you say it's still an easy matchup. I always seem to get a land blown up turn 3/4 by World Breaker/Karn, followed by a turn 5 Ulamog, the Ceasless Hunger, blowing up 2 more lands, and can never recover. Counters don't help against all of the cast triggers. Am I just playing against really lucky opponents or am I doing something else wrong? I mean, obviously it's easily stoppable if you have the right interaction at the right time, but otherwise I haven't found the matchup to be nearly as easy as you all make it out to be. Warping Wail out of sideboard makes the matchup even more annoying.
As for UTron, you very much play against it like it's a U Control deck. You land a mine/dictate as best you can, wait until you get a Gigadrowse, tap all their blue sources on their turn, and go off the next turn. I think an important thing to remember against blue control decks is, it's fine letting them draw first as long as you can land the mine/dictate down. It is very much a sit and wait game. The only threats they run that are scary are Mindslaver and Ugin can be slightly annoying. Maybe I just play against unlucky opponents on this front, but I find they hit Tron a LOT less reliably than Gx Tron, which gives you more time to breath and chain spells together in order to land a dictate/mine.
Mono blue tron can absolutely leverage Condescend in a way I wish we could, and if they draw well the only thing that can save us from getting steamrolled by blue spells with buyback and Wurmcoils is Gigadrowse so always make sure there are 4 in your 75.
Gx Tron is a whole different animal. I have one piece of advice to give, when your have both Remand and Gigadrowse and they lay their third tron on their third turn, remand whatever they cast and save your Gigadrowse for the next turn. Because if they land a second tower on their next turn they will then be casting Newlamog. whereas if you use the Gigadrowse first(to prevent the Karn or Wurmcoil) your remand will be absolutely the worst way to stop that card.
Oh and btw if your having trouble with lots of tron in your local meta(like I was this winter) go put 2 Commandeer and 1 Bribery in your sidebaord. Planting turn 5 Emrakul and taking opponents turn three Karns usually wins games.....
Now can someone answer a question for me...
What is the best card we can stick in our board to stop the new Deaths Shadow build? And don't limit yourselves to blue either, so far Devour Flesh seems pretty cute but it's waaay not in our colors. And somekindoffog seems to be it since their gameplan is to win withbeats but I would like to hear about otherpossiblygood or even bad ideas. I'm headed to an IQ next weekend and I'd like to have solved the riddle by then.
I play monoblue mainboard with a mostly white sideboard. I used to run 1 Stony Silence and 1 Kataki, War's Wage. but since the katakis exceptional performance at regionals three weeks ago, I have cut the Stony Silence and now I just bring 2 Kataki, War's Wage. The first time you wipe your opponents board with your exhaustion you will never think about stony silence again.
The only place I seem to be missing the Stony Silence is when playing against Tron but we are already favored vs them anyways especially after I bring in Commandeer and Bribery. THE TWO DIRTIEST CARDS IN MODERN. Tron almost becomes a free win.
Although it does seem appealing to try and get extra mileage out of halimar depths, your actually considering putting a land from play back into your hand. Granted it's so we can (hopefully) start blocking, which is a good thing. I'm sure we have all felt the pain of missing our turn 4 island, but that is essentially what this god is asking of us. Setting ourselves back a turn is not usually something I set out to do so when I look at the "pay 4: draw a card", it looks really bad to me... more like "pay 4: miss a land drop, ohh yeah and as an upside I guess you can draw a card and maybe block, if your lucky".
Don't get me wrong I am going to test him just like the rest of you all will, but I am suspecting right now that his ceiling wont be enough to make his floor worth it.
On the play: start 7 cards
Turn one- play island (possibly serum visions): 6 cards
Turn two- draw card, play island, play mine: 5 cards in hand
Turn three- draw two cards, play island, play Kefnet: still 5 cards in hand
Turn four- draw two cards, swing with kefnet then play island, or make land drop then activate the draw only if you need to block
On the play: start 7 cards
Turn one- play island (possibly serum visions): 6 cards
Turn two- draw card, play island, probably hold up remand: 6 cards in hand
Turn three- draw card, play island, pass with mana up for dictate, end-step dictate: 6, then 5
Turn four- draw two cards, play island, cast kefnet: still 5
Turn five- draw two cards, swing with kefnet then cast a warp, or make land drop then activate the draw only if you need to block
Mine turns him on faster than dictate so if he turns out to be worth it we may all be playing more mines and less dictates
The way I look at it he is just about impossible to turn on without an engine in play and that's my big beef with him. I think it makes him win more. If his draw ability didn't set us back a turn it would go along way to convincing me otherwise, but as is, its a drawback more than a benefit.
When I have I fat goyf and and even fatter deaths shadow breathing down my neck, paying 4 mana to try and dig for an answer is not where we want to be. But I do have to point out this reinforces my earlier arguement about this card being win more because the hands where you have enough breathing room to waste 4 mana (and probably most of a turn) looking for answers are the hands where your opponent is durdling and thus this is still a win more card.
I can't even count the number of hands Ive won with only one engine in play less than 4 cards in hand.
The only way I can see to make him more playable would be to go back to playing the tower, but that card also suffered from the same problem Kefnet does. It won't help you catch up from being behind, but both are good when everything is going great... I'm sorry to tell you all but that makes this a win more card and that means we can't run it.
p.s. Not including other popular cards like Lilly and KCommand, a quick search on mtg top8 yields that the worst menace is in 26.4% of modern decks as a 3.3 of so prepare to be below 7 cards often.
Every time I cut Thassa, I end up putting her back in the main shortly after. She does too many different things for us
-Let's start with the obvious: She is an indestructable (sometimes unblockable) 5/5 beater that your opponents will fear.
-Her scry sets us up to miracle a little bit more often than we would otherwise, and helps to drastically improve the quality of our draws. Remember this triggers every turn for no additional mana. Because of this we can count this mana-free scry every turn as about .5 of an engine. So by adding her you can effectively go up to 6.5 engines
-The two above benefits make her really, really good in grindy matchups
-Once we slip into extra turns, this scry becomes even better because we can start pitching everything that doesn't say take an extra turn. So at this point in the game her scry is worth closer to .75 (possibly more) of an engine, since you will be pitching most of what you see and only leaving it on top if it says, take an extra turn. (unless your running shy on lands while going off but hey she fixes that too)
-I have caught many an opponent off guard by flashing in a suprise dictate and then blocking with what they thought was a harmless enchantment.
-She swings for 5 and can very quickly close out a game even if you draw her late. Unlike a late game Jace which needs several turns to do his thing and your going to need to use a reshuffle (which I don't even have in my 75) if you want to ult him.
-Sometimes (not often) they will have untapped blockers for your 6/6 and you will want to use her "makes things unblockable" ability to close the game out earlier. better than having to swing into their blockers until they are all dead, or you finally draw that gigadrowse or cryptic you've been digging for.
-Sometimes (more often) she will let your Snaps sneak in for 2 through a bunch of souls tokens and whatnot. You can convince people to burn their removal on Snap when they should be trying to save it for our 6/6.
-When opponents see her as one of your win cons game one they will be encouraged to side out destroy effects since they are dead against her, clearing the way for your Thing in the Ice to come in from the side and take over game 2.
-I have had opponents decide to find ways to stop my primary win-con so those games our only hope are our backups like Thassa. So far Meddling Mage naming Part the Waterveil was bad news for me since i couldn't find a card to bounce it. And I have also had people target part with the powerful 1-2 combo-punch of Thoughtseize into Surgical. So having a reliable plan B is a good idea. Hands like that are not auto-losses because I know I could draw into her later and still win.
I personally think she is a must include and I can't seem to cut her since she does double duty as both engine and win con. I will admit she is bad vs certain match-ups and I do side her out for additional interaction against some decks. Test her out for about 10 hands against a variety of opponents and see if you can also find good use for her in here, you might be suprised at what she actually does for you.
I tested it a couple of FNMs ago and it seemed to work out pretty well (which is why i mentioned him). The additional upside of playing it on turn 1 gave my opponents something to focus on besides the fact that I was going to combo them out even if they dealt with it. Watching them have the small victory of killing my first delver gave me smiles because i knew i would likely draw 2-3 more since we see so much of our library when comboing.
I wasn't expecting to kill them with the first delver anyways but the hands where they weren't able to answer it were over very fast. Overall i gave him a thumbs up but i never found the right cards to cut for him
Any win-con that costs 5 mana competes with Time Warp. Because why would I cast Ojutai when I could be casting actual time warps? the same can be said for any X-mana win con in this deck. Our mana is usually pretty tight if we plan on never passing back to our opponent from turn 5 on. That means when turn 5 comes our wincons need to either be out in play already or cheap (like planting a turn 6 delver and then continuing to warp until they lose to the 3/2 flyer).
This makes cards like Keranos, or Elspeth unusable even though they can absolutely win games all by themselves if handed several consecutive turns. So whenever considering powerful win cons, just realize that it helps if they are both be impervious to most removal and extremely mana efficient. So they had better win you the game effectively that turn if they are going to cost enough to compete with our warps.
On top of that the two current popular win-cons of Jace and Thassa both have strong synergy with helping us to go off in the first place as well as acting as secondary win cons by themselves, its hard for Ojutai or any other card to compete with that two-fold benefit. Find me a win-con that also does double duty in some other way and I will gladly test it.
I will try this at a local FNM sometime and see how it goes.
-I think gemstone caverns are only awesome like 3% of hands, that's not enough for me to stop running my other utility lands in those slots
-I think that geier reach sanitarium is a trap, it costs you 3 mana and doesnt actually net you an extra card. It only improves card quality. The only hands it will help you anyways are ones where your opponent is already durdling really badly and thus its a win more card.
-Radiant fountain is absoluteley worth running, I just feel its not as good as what the other utility lands do for us
When I first tested Darksteel Citadel I thought it would fall somewhere in between "oh how cute" and "win more". I played with it a little online and then I took it to an FNM with a citadel in the list. Its actual effects are multi-fold. The obvious is that it cannot ever be stopped by the terminater or pushed around by bullies, which is why when I initially tested it I expected it to be a win more card and that I would end up cutting after proving my theory through testing.
But since I also run a singeton Thassa, and I try and never let them see inkmoth nexus game one (if possible). Most people think that my win conditions are all indestructable. which means they pull out everything that isn't named Path to exile. Meanwhile I'm siding in three Things which are absolutely not indestructable and love taking over the game if they dont get picked on by bullies.
So yes even though the corner case of them actually being indestructable doesnt help that much. where they really shine is what they do to people who just lost to either a 5/5 indestructable or a 6/6 indestructale when they are making their choices of what to side out. They have a secondary effect of playing mind games with your opponent which help protect thing and that's why it has stayed in.
Remember we are fairly fringe and most of our opponents will only have a rough idea of how our deck actually works, so they will misplay and make sub-par choices. Anything we can do to help them make the wrong choices is good for us.
Since we have to get to 9 mana to win the game off of part the waterveil, using a Ghost Quarter or a Tec Edge to answer an opposing manland is just not as good at tapping it down with gigadrowse or just swinging into it with your 6/6. Remember that using it before your cast the awakened part sets us back a turn and two cards in the form of a land (to replace the ghost quarter) and a time warp effect (to keep going off while they are still tapped down). This is not as good as just letting them throw their manland under your bus to buy them a turn, which only sets you back by one card (a time warp effect) so its more efficient. And by the time you get to awaken your land, you have usually (like 90% of hands) had several chances to tap all of theirs lands and creatures down with gigadrowses so its not going to help very often anyways.
The upside of awakening your land when you get to 9 mana, and then using your ghost quarter to get their manland is not as good as running our other options Inkmoth Nexus, Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, and either Geier Reach Sanitarium or Darksteel Citadel. We can only afford to run a total of 3 non-blue lands so we have to be extremely selective.
And we cant afford for any of our lands to enter tapped so avoid putting normally good cards like Faerie Conclave in because they are a trap. The new fetchable cycling duals are not for our deck for the same reason. I play the white splash and I have tested both two Temples and then later a one of Collonade and a one of Tango but we cannot afford for our turn 5 land drop to enter tapped most hands. In fact having any lands enter tapped felt really bad turns 2 though 5 but seemed not as horrible on turn 1 or after turn 5. I found they weren't worth the stumbling on mana that they cause during the most critical turns of the game so now I run 2 Filterlands.
On this similar tangent has anyone tried running a little heavy on mine effects (like the full 8 set) and ran Simian Spirit Guide to cheat them out early? I posted previously on why I dont like Jace Beleren but cheating him out a turn early would fix all of those problems then he effectively becomes a howling mine with additional upside, and for that matter how about turn 4 Warps, turn 3 counter + bounce, Turn 8 awakening, sometimes using it on another spell so one can hold up mana for a counter ect..
We draw a serious amount of cards with this deck so the inherent card disadvantage one would incur from running simians would easily get drowned out by all the "draw a card" we have in our deck. This becomes especially true when cheating out mine effects a turn early, that first extra card we would draw will even out with the the card you burned.
1 Darksteel Citadel
1 Inkmoth Nexus
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Flooded Strand
1 Hallowed Fountain
2 Mystic Gate
9 Island
4 Dictate of Kruphix
2 Howling Mine
4 Serum Visions
Stall
4 Gigadrowse
4 Remand
4 Exhaustion
2 Cryptic Command
2 Condescend
4 Time Warp
4 Temporal Mastery
3 Part the waterveil
Side
3 Thing in the Ice
2 Rest in Peace
2 Commandeer
2 Chalice of the Void
2 Kataki, War's Wage
2 Riot Control
2 Blessed Alliance
Have any of you tested condescend? After getting locked out of the game by Mono-Blue-Tron a few times I decided to try it out one FNM. Ive been running it for a couple of weeks now and it feels pretty good so far. It is currently in place of snapcaster mage in what I have been calling "my 2 flex slots". You will notice the extra two counters in the main when playing aginst other combo decks. And the instant speed scry is pretty good even when you aren't getting mileage out of its Power Sink half. On the play it feels flat busted and even on the draw I have been catching plenty of opponents off guard who are just trying to play cards on curve when they know (or at least suspect) that they are in a race to win before I start comboing out. This card is very strong turns 2-4 which is where this deck always wants to have good quality interference available plus it helps set up our draws to establish our combo. The largest drawback Ive seen so far is that I can no longer flash in snapcater to block an already resolved Eidolon. And there's now only one way I can win game one. Which is pretty risky. I do miss running a one of Thassa.
Most matches my plan is to side in 3 Things, and relevent hate, while sometimes(if i need to lower my curve) siding out one Part. I have been tempted to run a super spicy Psychic Spiral as a diversion-wincon for just game 1 (unless they don't see it, then it can stay in i guess) to incentivize them to bring in their Rest in Peace and Relic of Progenitus type hate. Which will be absolutely dead games 2 and 3 because I don't believe we need the reshuffle in this deck and if this list doesnt use Snapcasters, then I don't need a graveyard... at all. And any mind games I can play with them to convince them to bring in 2-4 dead cards from their side would be a serious bonus in my book. We all have the option of exploiting the transformational sideboard effect and if any of you have done this in the past I would love some tips on what did and didn't work out well.
I asked around both on here and with a few buddies and the best answer I got back about how to beat the new (Sam Black has been playing it for like 6 months so new is a relative term) lean mean Jund's Shadow that dominated Vancouver is Blessed Alliance. Thank you for your suggestions and please keep them coming.
I was having this discussion with another regular at my local FNMs a couple of weeks ago we both agreed that even though jace, the mind sculptor and Stoneforge Mystic were easy "must bans" when modern was new. They are not as scary as they were back then. And if they were to unban either card, they would both immediately spawn a new deck in modern which would easily stabalize at at like 1-3% percent of the meta (modern miracles and esper-Batterskull), and certainly wouldn't become too large of a share of the meta and have to be removed
But Ive already taken out 3-drop Jace because it feel sooo bad to tap out for him on turn 3 against certain decks. Aggro will punish you for not casting exhaustion or holding up remand for the turn. He is basically a dead card against most combo decks because I refuse to tap out to cast him because casting him screams "you can go ahead and win now I'm not gonna counter anything". To be clear this has nothing to do with weather or not he is effective once hes cast, because I love what he does for us. He draws both players cards(check), He draws just me cards(check), He can do a pretty a good job of ulting twice for the mill-win(check). But if I'm too scared to cast him against enough of the meta that means hes a sideboard card at best.
So now you ask about a walker that costs one more mana? 4-drop Jace is a serious value-town kinda guy. But all of the problems I had with his younger version are even more exaggerated with him because now aggro will punish you for not casting exhaustion or holding up remand or Cryptic Command for the turn. And again combo with thank you for the free win if they have it in hand.
Now I do think if they unban it you will see one to two copies show up in sideboards because of what he can do for us vs midrange and control. But even that would be more a personal preference choice and not an auto include since we are already favored vs midrange and most types of control and hes not exactly an auto win causing silver bullet.
I value running an additional early interaction card instead, because I feel it has helped me far more than the <1% of times Ive lost due to decking. What really happens is every time I try to pluck a Gigadrowse or Exhaustion for elixers or Day's I find can't because I feel like running that 4th exhaustion or gigadrowse has saved me way more than 1% of my hands.
2)He looks good as an alternate win-con but Ive never tested him because I'm scared to cast him before I start going off. He draws all sorts of removal because people fear him and unless all their lands are tapped down I think I'd rather rely on Jace Beleren because he can never be answered by say a Terminate.
3)Don't forget to bounce Melira before you expect to get anywhere with Inkmoth Nexus. And if she becomes more popular you can always go up to a 2 Inkmoth and 1 Mikokoro package.
4)For a while I was running 4 dictates 2 mines AND 3 Visions. It was like putting pure jet-fuel in your library, I regularly 2-0'd Junk and Jund with it (even through all the discard), but it didn't help against burn or pump-infect at all, and it still didn't make the 8-rack match-up favorable so I have recently been shying away from running quite so much gas and am currently testing out a 3-set of condescend instead of the visions. Both have merits: mine is more reliable, vision is more explosive.
I'm not Xexen but hopefully a variety of opinions will help clear up why some of us do and don't do certain things
When I first put this deck together last summer I was able to get ahold of my playsets of Time Warp, Part the Waterveil, and 2 Temporal Trespass very easily. But I had trouble finding players with any Temporal Masteries for trade, so I played the deck without them for a while and used Temporal Trespass instead. It dug me out of several holes and being able to plant a mine/dictate and delve away most of my yard in the same turn gave me an out against board states no one should reasonably be able to win through. The advantage of either card is they can get us a very cheap turn spell which lets us put an engine in play that same turn. The real merit of the Trespass over the Mastery is that you can control when you cast it on the cheap(as long as you have survived into the mid or late game and your yard is big enough). Even though most of us have decided against using it there is nothing wrong with running a single Temporal Trespass, but I will advise against running any more than just the one because two in hand with no yard is a very bad place to be at.
Be warned you may want to side it out if you expect people to attack your yard with things like Rest in Peace
Since this deck is still a bit fringe, there are only a handful of people out there trying to find the right build for this deck. We are narrowing down the mainboard to the point that there is only about 3 flex slots in it now. I have to agree with Xexen that the list he used in vancouver is in a sweet spot, and his list at the very least is really close to where we want to be at. But our sideboards are still all over the place. Its probably a mixture of the fact that there are a few different splashes people are trying and that theres so few of us testing but we all disagree on what to bring in our 15. I personally splash white for the solid hatebaord it can bring to the table and because Glacial Fortress is un-choke-able with very little drawback.
I personally believe we (as a group) should use something akin to the elephant method to devise our sideboards, and (here is the hard part) include the splashes when we do so. This would finally let us know which splashes truly are the most optimal per the current meta, and would give us a better indication of how to adapt with it as it changes.
http://www.starcitygames.com/article/26317_The-Elephant-Method-A-Case-Study.html
Since our mainboard is so tight (apart from Uw having a different landbase and Ur having bolt-snap-bolt as its wincon instead of part) and our sideboards are still a bit wild I think this deck is the perfect candidate for it.
Mono blue tron can absolutely leverage Condescend in a way I wish we could, and if they draw well the only thing that can save us from getting steamrolled by blue spells with buyback and Wurmcoils is Gigadrowse so always make sure there are 4 in your 75.
Gx Tron is a whole different animal. I have one piece of advice to give, when your have both Remand and Gigadrowse and they lay their third tron on their third turn, remand whatever they cast and save your Gigadrowse for the next turn. Because if they land a second tower on their next turn they will then be casting Newlamog. whereas if you use the Gigadrowse first(to prevent the Karn or Wurmcoil) your remand will be absolutely the worst way to stop that card.
Oh and btw if your having trouble with lots of tron in your local meta(like I was this winter) go put 2 Commandeer and 1 Bribery in your sidebaord. Planting turn 5 Emrakul and taking opponents turn three Karns usually wins games.....
Now can someone answer a question for me...
What is the best card we can stick in our board to stop the new Deaths Shadow build? And don't limit yourselves to blue either, so far Devour Flesh seems pretty cute but it's waaay not in our colors. And some kind of fog seems to be it since their gameplan is to win with beats but I would like to hear about other possibly good or even bad ideas. I'm headed to an IQ next weekend and I'd like to have solved the riddle by then.
The only place I seem to be missing the Stony Silence is when playing against Tron but we are already favored vs them anyways especially after I bring in Commandeer and Bribery. THE TWO DIRTIEST CARDS IN MODERN. Tron almost becomes a free win.