I'd like my account to be restored: previous username: StreexGeist.
Secondly, I've been spending my time for over one year on the spirits forum, before and after UW and Bant section were merged. I've been the one writing down the primer for the UW Spirit section, it's more than 23 pages of a word file that I still own but that I'm not sharing again because I'm incredibly pissed with what happened.
This is one of the crazyest things ever seen on an internet site, hoping mods will be able to fix this mess. And I know mods have no responsability on this so I'm not angry with them, but as many other pointed out, I've received an email from "CURSE" in my spam folder 3 weeks ago,just saw it now. This is not the way to inform users of such a disastrous change about to happen.
Alright, spoilers are completed and the 1cmc drop we ve got is that weird cat/spirit that fits a defensive strategy at the very best. People willing to mess with Esper now have a couple of extra one drop.
I actually believe Pestilent spirit is a very powerful card with stats that make it an aggressive creature able to generate advantage when blocked in average scenarios (not considering the presence of tokens), it also works as a good trader when it comes to blocking some big threat. The static ability is impressive but forces this tribe down the weirdest and most unexplored road, which is Black-Red-X.
Getting rid of Spell Queller, Selfless and Drogskol Captain sounds crazy at the moment, yet the blue core would be untouched (wanderer-Rattlechains-phantom) and these are the creatures I care the most about. In my opinion Grixis is missing one disruptive 1cmc drop and a 3cmc drop to be somehow competitive (at least on paper), yet I like the idea of a completely new version of the deck seeing light.
I've got the feeling this version is going to be a weird graft, some tempo and some midrange elements, it's abandoning the draw-attack-pass style in favour of a more proactive type of play. Testing will tell how bad this actually is.
My Grixis version 1.0 is this by the way:
Speaking of competitive versions of the deck, I believe it's time to give Jeskai spirits a shot now. Izzet Phoenix is wrecking bant spirits down to 2% of the metagame according to MtgGoldfish. I believe thing in the ice is the biggest reason, along with the ability of the deck of drawing a crazy amount of cards and casting an insane amount of spells. I see in Eidolon of the Great Revel an answer to such a strategy: protecting Eidolon will make a phoenix cost 6 life to reanimate and 8 life for a Thing to flip. Eidolons (both the white and red ones) are the only creatures able to destroy that strategy, all of the other fancy stuff like reflector mages, echoing truth, declaration in stone, are temporary answers to a deck which is inevitably going to present another threat and another again few turns later.
Eidolon is such a dangerous creature though and it's also so hard to cast, I'd start this new version with one worship in my sideboard at the very list since I intend Jeskai Spirit as a not enough aggro deck, not as fast as revolt zoo. My fear is that it will be outraced a number of times, plus the switch from PtE to Bolt is a concession to midrange and value decks.
Lots of compromises have to be done to balance the deck against the field, this is going to be my first attempt at it:
Do most people on this forum still think that the U/W version of this deck is the superior version? I have only see the Bant version represented in the major tournaments lately.
I think what you see here is a discussion about what people is playing: they report the experience they have with their version of the deck and their own brew. For example, I'm committed to UW, so you'll read posts form me talking about UW only.
As for bant vs UW, bant has access to collected company and noble hierarch, possibly the two best green cards in modern, or two of the best three along with tarmogoyf if you prefer, which largely accounts for its superiority over the pure blue white version. Card advantage and acceleration are a thing in modern.
Ok i've faced those decks more coming to the conclusion Eidolon is the mvp in the match along with nebelgast herald. Rip didn't even feel necessary, not because it wouldn't have an impact on the game but because both the red version and the UR/grixis version of the Phoenix decks can attack you from different angles, so having a piece of hate against half of their strategy comes at the cost of it not being enough to slow them down: hollow ones on one side, thing in the ice /drakes on the other can close the game quickly along with burn spells.
Nebelgast herald is my pick over GoST in the current metagame by the way, too fast, too many trying to aggro you out and control decks being set back are the reasons why I believe GoSt ain't the best spirit for the UW version right now. I have also seen death shadows going up, not just locally but also at the local RPTQ. Nebelgast herald is matchwinner against them, definitely one of those cards I need to draw at one point to screw their plans and race them back. Herald also lets me cut 2-3 PtE against control comfortably because I know I have ways to deal with their 5/5s. I believe 2x in the 75 are very reasonable as things stand.
Guys I'm struggling so hard against those Phoenix decks. They can deploy a number of cheap threats either via graveyard or sticking some others like thing in the ice/crackling drake which actually take advantage of how the whole deck is built so that their power gets maximized. They also have reach and can massively shoot the field with multiple bolt effects. Yesterday 3x pte haven't been enough because they draw so much you can keep up with all of the threats they eventually end up having in their hand. It really makes me think of what the approach should be, bringing in side adjustments or trying to outspeed them somehow not playing around anger of the gods and deploying your hand asap. I feel like I'm facing a new kind of degeneracy which can't be hoosed by a single hate type of card (rest in peace).
I'm also wondering if this is a friendly metagame to Spirit of the Labyrinth, or maybe it's just this moment of the metagames where phoenix strategies are being seen everywhere and the hype is going to dilute with the passsage of the weeks.
Deprive works in all those situations but that UU casting cost makes me hesitant as in personal experience I regularly seem to end up with a colourless land/basic plains - maybe you're right in that it's a later game counterspell that misses that turn 2/3 play but hits the payoff cards after them.
Yep, this is the way I want to play deprive. Fact is that against Vizier and Elves and KCI you bring them in anyways and hope to hit the blue sources asap. If they have the turn 3 kill deprive is the card that can keep you alive, so I put statistics aside ( I'm a fan of them and Karsten too, FYI) and bring in all the disruptive tools I have access to.
Hi, i recently decided to join the blue side of magic =)
Ive played burn and mardu pyromancer before and ive just completed this deck.
I would like some feedback, tips etc. My local meta have alot of creature decks and a few combo decks.
We have 2 playing Valakut which is why i like Leonin Arbiter.
You've got tons of coloured sources, you can shave some for extra utility lands. I think 1x cavern of souls is something to have, and the deck can definitely work with 4 grey lands (mutavaults, moorlands) if 21 is your land count. I have loved and relied on the Moorland haunt - nebelgast herald interaction for all the time untill Phantom has been released and I can say it's been one of the bet features of my deck for a long time, but now I think we're better off with 8 lords + mutavault and the beat down plan. Also the 4th seachrome coast is more important than the 2nd hallowed fountain; and the first four fetchlands should always be flooded strands for obvious reasons
I like the old school approach to the deck so for me 4x selfless are stock, especially in a metagame where humans, jund and GB are a thing: fogging or trading selfless for a removal aimed at spell queller or drogskol captain is very relevant nowadays.
In my opinion UW doesn't work if you don't provide a reasonable amount of drawing and filtering. It happened to me to rank 2nd to a 53 people pptq this summer, or to hit the first place at some FNM with a lists that didn't have many ways to draw, fact if that you'll have a hard time hitting an overall 70% win rate with no card draw or deck manipulation, on the long term . I'm sold to this idea right now, the best advice I can give you is to lower the curve and add 4 cheap cards that make you draw.
In your side I don't see stony silence. They are a bit narrow but very relevant, they shut down entire strategies on their own... pithing needle isn't that great of a card for us instead. Not sure about ensnaring bridge, you won't attack either And valakut is scary but overall it's a 60-40 in our favor once you learn how to play against that deck, arbiters seem unnecessary.
So is there a consensus on UW vs Bant Spirits? Or to put it another way which one holds up against Dredge and KCI better?
The consensus is that bant is better than UW. I have played bant just once and that was before the bant-vial version came up, so I can speak for UW only. KCI and Dredge are good matchups, sure, you'll always lose the game where they pull off a crazy start, but on average I am happy when I'm playing against those decks. My record against dredge is 9 wins, 3 losses so far since the end of September.
Deprive is a counter that should give you the chance to contest those spells spell queller can't hit, so it is meant to be cast off curve, ideally. Off curve means more chances to have the double blue available.
Truth is whatever the counterspell we decide to use, there's a downside to live with. Negate doesn't cover creatures, which I need a counterspell to be able to. Unified will doesn't work on an empty board, which happens, nor when your opponent has got more, frequently happening against vizier, hardened scales and elves. I think mana leak is the best compromise but it won't help against a miracled terminus, and won't help against scapeshift cast on seven lands nor against tron in a good amount of times.
I want a clean counterspell so I'm stretching the numbers in my mana base and live with that tempo loss when I'm forced to cast it on turn 2 with no vial on the table. I have never felt like "I need a better counterspell than deprive" since I have brought the 3 copies in my side. It's been one year now since November 2017, I consider it a staple card as much as the 2x eidolon. Those are the 5 cards I have never shaved so far.
As for the 1cmc spirit yes, that would have helped a lot, yet I believe a late game SV is a decent gamble. You might end up drawing a land as much as a creature with a higher mana cost which means a heavier impact. Having it in form of a spirit creature would have given so much explosiveness to this version though.
I 've just 5-0ed in MtGO competitive league with the 3 SV list. All there's to say about this card is that it has removed 2x vials from the top in one game, it's able of doing stuff like T1 draw,scry stony silence to the top, T2 stony, tron dies (Stony was 3 cards deep before SV). Again, it makes many of the hands keepable just because of its presence, haven't had anything this useful in my deck since the last time I've actually played with it long ago.
One option could be going all in on SV shaving one obsession, but obsesion is just as much powerful once the game goes on, I value that card a lot too.
I have took a read at the UW control forum where many argue SV is superior to opt; their issue with SV is that it won't enable instant speed terminus, it actually nver triggers miracle so they have been forced to pick opt instead (it's also true their deck demands staying open with mana as much as they can). What they say is that there's a number of situations where you just like the first card and thus you lose the scry two.
I'm picking SV because my intention is to cast it either on turn 1 or later off-curve, and because of the scry 2 precisely. It helps so much curving out and the card itself digs 3 deep: this means you can comfortably keep a one land-vial hand on the play because worst case scenario you re likely to miss one single land drop, SV will find another one. One thing I'm getting convinced about is that a dead card off the top of your deck is just equal at skipping your draw step; I guess UW players here know what I mean to be running out of spells and peeling a couple lands. It makes me feel so good to remove one unnecessary vial from the top.
SV makes also your sideboard plan much more consistent, so far I'm liking it a lot and I think it's best 9th to 11th 1cmc drop we have access to at the moment.
No way, creatures must tap to attack. Also, it won't help you recover once your board has been wiped away. Drawing in my opinion has to come through creatures or via 1cmc non creature spells. Other options make the deck more clunky and they shouldn't be considered in the UW version where we have no mana acceleration.
Waiting for wizards to print some new blowout card advantage engine and make me take this all back.
Hei, UW spirits update: today i top4'ed at a 25 people tourney. Nothing amazing to talk about beside the impact Serum Visions had on my games. I have tested 2x MB because 8x 1cmc drops are such a silly number I can't stand it any longer ( and yeah I'm still on UW instead of bant just because I like the two colours). So I wanted something to do turn 1 in case of no vial/wanderer showing up, and serum is a sweet filler. You might argue opt plays better with our strategy, but I think there're so many spots where you can curve out with serum that it's nonsense to give up the scry 2 option. Opt's great when you ve got spell queller up, fact is that I wanted cantrips to either fit the moment of the game where I've just landed my first land, or later to cycle for one and sculpt the top of the deck to prevent flooding. SV + vial is so good I don't need to explain, you sculpt the top in order to be able to curve out with vials and mana in the most efficient way. Also, scrying land+vial to the bottom has won one of the crucial games to get in the top 8. Had I drawn those two, I would have died with no gase in hand against Naya Company.
Now I'm testing the 3x serum + 2x obsessions. Maybe a bit too much but I want to see how much this filter/draw package helps. Making the deck shorter is very useful post side to dig for bullets, having extra 1cmc drops is so much better than having pseudo one drops ( refering to the 3x obsessions I had in my previous version of the deck) or too many 2-3cmc drops which make your deck so clunky in absence of vial.
So, this is where I'm at with UW Spirits. Big up for SV really, I ve been on this card one year ago when I still did not have eough experience to understand the role of it in the curve. Now I feel like I know how to extract the maximum value out of it and the perception is that of a deck that is capable of keeping hands i would have normally sent back just because SV allows you to dig 3 cards deep to search the type of card you are in need of.
I like RiP a lot too because it prevents 8 of their cards from moving counters around, which are the archbound ravager and worker. Hangarback walker is also exiled and won't generate any thopter when sacrificed.
I've already asked you a couple questions on FB, I'm taking this chance to ask you some more questions, thanks for visiting us by the way
UW control is a matchup where I tend not to exted my hand either, but would you actually prefer having 2x GQ in place of Mutavaults just to deal with their mid/late game threats? I mean, colonade and azcanta are a concern, but it feel like my task is to approach lethal damage by that stage, and if they managed to prevent me from racing, then I'm doomed anyways, because their PW are going to generate the value they need to outplay me from there on. I'm not saying GQ has no utility, but that extra Mutavaults better fit the aggro plan we are supposed to pull off. This is why I gave up on the surgical extraction plan long ago: the goal here is not to prevent them from threating us with one of their late game win conditions, but to get them to have no time to recur to these.
What's your opinion on Damping Sphere versus Eidolon of Rhetoric? I see how the former is so important to deal with tron post side, i also can't get rid of Eidolon as it is so damn good against a plethora of decks, from combos to mardu, jeskay, blue moon and aggro too, especially when I'm on the play.
I have longly thought about hurkyl's recall, and I did play with it for months. Eventually, I wrote down the matchups where hurkyl and stony were spendable, and my results say Hurkyl's good against Whirls decks( blows up ensnaring bridge and all of the garbage they have landed on the board), affinity ( which is a bit out of meta nowadays) and red prison deck, because of chalice and bridges again. Stony is an all-round anti artifact hate card you want to have against affinity, hardened scales, kci, nauseam, lantern and whirl decks and tron. I ended up relying on stony for my anty artifact plan and switching hurkyl with echoing truth as it's just as good at bouncing every kind of cage, plus it's way more flexible. What made you pend towards hurkyl insead of Echoing?
How often have you had issues with casting your coloured spells? with a mention to Auriok Champion which has a prohibitive WW casting cost
Have you ever felt 5x counterspells post side to be too much? which are the matchups where you absolutely need that amount of counterspells to deal with your opponent? I ve been on 3x since november 2017 and they have always felt enough.
Do you think Horizon canopy is a 'must have' in this deck and (given we all know how good the cycling ability is) how often the extra damage has given you troubles? How many times you found yourself in a spot where you had to adjust your plans in order to reduce the impact of that land on your life total?
Regarding Curious Obsession, you have told me you actually like it in the UW control matchup post side. I do agree that CO forces action on their part which puts us in the spot to use rattlechains and generate advantage, but doesn't holding CO mainboard against UW feel like holding phantasmal image mainboard against Jeskai? Especially in a postsideboard game where they know how they have to play and what kind of hand they are supposed to start with, which reduced the variability you can exploit on G1 when they might have kept a removal light hand due to the lack of informations about what's going on on your side.
I'm curious to know how your sideboarding looks like against UW.
Speaking of Moorland haunt, I've found out it's good enough to justify its coexistence with RiP in a number of matchups, one of which is Mardu. If the deck I'm facing is putting a fast clock, like dredge, hollow and vengevine, then I'm happy trimming that land when I'm on the draw, both because of RiP and because it's unlikely it's going to be impactful against those go wide decks. Against midrange, instead, I still want that land because it's still providing mana under rest in peace, and it's helping me so much generating value if no RiP has shown up. Rip can shut them down for a larg part of their strategy, but if i don't get to draw it, or i get it discarded on T1,I very much need moorland to keep up with their mass of spot removals. I could say the same of vials+stony silence against tron, but don't want to dilute here.
Now Assassin's trophy is bringing up midrange, so I believe Moorland is still a reasonable pick as a one of. UW control, Spirits, and Humans are also good matchups to have that land mainboard.
One last less specific question: do you adjust your sideboard choices depending whether you re on the play or on the draw?
Well, thanks for the service you've provided us so far. Hoping we'll have a new forum in the future which resembles this one. If so, I'll be still bringing my contribution and my experience there.
Secondly, I've been spending my time for over one year on the spirits forum, before and after UW and Bant section were merged. I've been the one writing down the primer for the UW Spirit section, it's more than 23 pages of a word file that I still own but that I'm not sharing again because I'm incredibly pissed with what happened.
This is one of the crazyest things ever seen on an internet site, hoping mods will be able to fix this mess. And I know mods have no responsability on this so I'm not angry with them, but as many other pointed out, I've received an email from "CURSE" in my spam folder 3 weeks ago,just saw it now. This is not the way to inform users of such a disastrous change about to happen.
Streex
I actually believe Pestilent spirit is a very powerful card with stats that make it an aggressive creature able to generate advantage when blocked in average scenarios (not considering the presence of tokens), it also works as a good trader when it comes to blocking some big threat. The static ability is impressive but forces this tribe down the weirdest and most unexplored road, which is Black-Red-X.
Getting rid of Spell Queller, Selfless and Drogskol Captain sounds crazy at the moment, yet the blue core would be untouched (wanderer-Rattlechains-phantom) and these are the creatures I care the most about. In my opinion Grixis is missing one disruptive 1cmc drop and a 3cmc drop to be somehow competitive (at least on paper), yet I like the idea of a completely new version of the deck seeing light.
I've got the feeling this version is going to be a weird graft, some tempo and some midrange elements, it's abandoning the draw-attack-pass style in favour of a more proactive type of play. Testing will tell how bad this actually is.
My Grixis version 1.0 is this by the way:
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Rattlechains
4 Eidolon of the Great Revel
4 Supreme Phantom
2 Nebelgast Herald
4 Pestilent Spirit
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
Spells: 14
4 Aether Vial
4 Inquisitions of Kozilek
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Kolaghan's Command
4 Polluted Delta
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Watery Grave
1 Steam Vents
2 Blackcleave Cliff
1 Spirebluff Canal
1 Island
1 Swamp
1 Desolate Lighthouse
4 Cavern of Souls
2 Relic of Progenitus
1 Graftdigger's Cage
1 Echoing Truth
2 Electrikery
2 Countersquall
2 Collective Brutality
1 Damping Sphere
2 Unmoored Ego
1 Dimir Cutpurse
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
Speaking of competitive versions of the deck, I believe it's time to give Jeskai spirits a shot now. Izzet Phoenix is wrecking bant spirits down to 2% of the metagame according to MtgGoldfish. I believe thing in the ice is the biggest reason, along with the ability of the deck of drawing a crazy amount of cards and casting an insane amount of spells. I see in Eidolon of the Great Revel an answer to such a strategy: protecting Eidolon will make a phoenix cost 6 life to reanimate and 8 life for a Thing to flip. Eidolons (both the white and red ones) are the only creatures able to destroy that strategy, all of the other fancy stuff like reflector mages, echoing truth, declaration in stone, are temporary answers to a deck which is inevitably going to present another threat and another again few turns later.
Eidolon is such a dangerous creature though and it's also so hard to cast, I'd start this new version with one worship in my sideboard at the very list since I intend Jeskai Spirit as a not enough aggro deck, not as fast as revolt zoo. My fear is that it will be outraced a number of times, plus the switch from PtE to Bolt is a concession to midrange and value decks.
Lots of compromises have to be done to balance the deck against the field, this is going to be my first attempt at it:
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Rattlechains
3 Eidolon of the Great Revel
1 Phantasmal Image
4 Supreme Phantom
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol Captain
1 Nebelgast Herald
Spells: 10
4 Aether Vial
2 Curious Obsession
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Flooded Strand
4 Scalding Tarn
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Steam Vents
1 Sacred Foundry
3 Spirebluff Canal
1 Island
1 Plains
1 Moorland Haunt
1 Slayer's Stronghold
2 Cavern of Souls
2 Stony Silence
2 Rest In Peace
1 Echoing Truth
2 Negate
1 Ionize
1 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Eidolon of the Great Revel
1 Kira, Great Glass.Spinner
2 Path To Exile
1 Worship
1 Chandra, Torch of Defiance
This tribe is two red/black 1cmc/2cmc creature cards away from Grixis Spirits.
-can't wait to K command my opponent with this thing on the table
I think what you see here is a discussion about what people is playing: they report the experience they have with their version of the deck and their own brew. For example, I'm committed to UW, so you'll read posts form me talking about UW only.
As for bant vs UW, bant has access to collected company and noble hierarch, possibly the two best green cards in modern, or two of the best three along with tarmogoyf if you prefer, which largely accounts for its superiority over the pure blue white version. Card advantage and acceleration are a thing in modern.
Nebelgast herald is my pick over GoST in the current metagame by the way, too fast, too many trying to aggro you out and control decks being set back are the reasons why I believe GoSt ain't the best spirit for the UW version right now. I have also seen death shadows going up, not just locally but also at the local RPTQ. Nebelgast herald is matchwinner against them, definitely one of those cards I need to draw at one point to screw their plans and race them back. Herald also lets me cut 2-3 PtE against control comfortably because I know I have ways to deal with their 5/5s. I believe 2x in the 75 are very reasonable as things stand.
I'm also wondering if this is a friendly metagame to Spirit of the Labyrinth, or maybe it's just this moment of the metagames where phoenix strategies are being seen everywhere and the hype is going to dilute with the passsage of the weeks.
Yep, this is the way I want to play deprive. Fact is that against Vizier and Elves and KCI you bring them in anyways and hope to hit the blue sources asap. If they have the turn 3 kill deprive is the card that can keep you alive, so I put statistics aside ( I'm a fan of them and Karsten too, FYI) and bring in all the disruptive tools I have access to.
You've got tons of coloured sources, you can shave some for extra utility lands. I think 1x cavern of souls is something to have, and the deck can definitely work with 4 grey lands (mutavaults, moorlands) if 21 is your land count. I have loved and relied on the Moorland haunt - nebelgast herald interaction for all the time untill Phantom has been released and I can say it's been one of the bet features of my deck for a long time, but now I think we're better off with 8 lords + mutavault and the beat down plan. Also the 4th seachrome coast is more important than the 2nd hallowed fountain; and the first four fetchlands should always be flooded strands for obvious reasons
I like the old school approach to the deck so for me 4x selfless are stock, especially in a metagame where humans, jund and GB are a thing: fogging or trading selfless for a removal aimed at spell queller or drogskol captain is very relevant nowadays.
In my opinion UW doesn't work if you don't provide a reasonable amount of drawing and filtering. It happened to me to rank 2nd to a 53 people pptq this summer, or to hit the first place at some FNM with a lists that didn't have many ways to draw, fact if that you'll have a hard time hitting an overall 70% win rate with no card draw or deck manipulation, on the long term . I'm sold to this idea right now, the best advice I can give you is to lower the curve and add 4 cheap cards that make you draw.
In your side I don't see stony silence. They are a bit narrow but very relevant, they shut down entire strategies on their own... pithing needle isn't that great of a card for us instead. Not sure about ensnaring bridge, you won't attack either
The consensus is that bant is better than UW. I have played bant just once and that was before the bant-vial version came up, so I can speak for UW only. KCI and Dredge are good matchups, sure, you'll always lose the game where they pull off a crazy start, but on average I am happy when I'm playing against those decks. My record against dredge is 9 wins, 3 losses so far since the end of September.
Truth is whatever the counterspell we decide to use, there's a downside to live with. Negate doesn't cover creatures, which I need a counterspell to be able to. Unified will doesn't work on an empty board, which happens, nor when your opponent has got more, frequently happening against vizier, hardened scales and elves. I think mana leak is the best compromise but it won't help against a miracled terminus, and won't help against scapeshift cast on seven lands nor against tron in a good amount of times.
I want a clean counterspell so I'm stretching the numbers in my mana base and live with that tempo loss when I'm forced to cast it on turn 2 with no vial on the table. I have never felt like "I need a better counterspell than deprive" since I have brought the 3 copies in my side. It's been one year now since November 2017, I consider it a staple card as much as the 2x eidolon. Those are the 5 cards I have never shaved so far.
As for the 1cmc spirit yes, that would have helped a lot, yet I believe a late game SV is a decent gamble. You might end up drawing a land as much as a creature with a higher mana cost which means a heavier impact. Having it in form of a spirit creature would have given so much explosiveness to this version though.
This is the list I'm using right now:
4 Mausoleum Wanderer
4 Selfless Spirit
4 Rattlechains
1 Remorseful Cleric
4 Supreme Phantom
4 Spell Queller
4 Drogskol Captain
1 Nebelgast Herald
Spells: 13
4 Aether Vial
4 Path to Exile
2 Curious Obsession
3 Serum Visions
4 Flooded Strand
3 Misty Rainforest
1 Hallowed Fountain
4 Seachrome Coast
3 Island
1 Plains
1 Moorland Haunt
3 Mutavault
1 Cavern of souls
1 Echoing Truth
1 Engineered Explosives
3 Deprive
1 Kira, Great Glass-Spinner
1 Jace, The Mind Sculptor
2 Stony Silence
2 Rest In Peace
2 Eidolon of Rhetoric
1 Azorius Herald
1 Geist of Saint Traft
One option could be going all in on SV shaving one obsession, but obsesion is just as much powerful once the game goes on, I value that card a lot too.
I'm picking SV because my intention is to cast it either on turn 1 or later off-curve, and because of the scry 2 precisely. It helps so much curving out and the card itself digs 3 deep: this means you can comfortably keep a one land-vial hand on the play because worst case scenario you re likely to miss one single land drop, SV will find another one. One thing I'm getting convinced about is that a dead card off the top of your deck is just equal at skipping your draw step; I guess UW players here know what I mean to be running out of spells and peeling a couple lands. It makes me feel so good to remove one unnecessary vial from the top.
SV makes also your sideboard plan much more consistent, so far I'm liking it a lot and I think it's best 9th to 11th 1cmc drop we have access to at the moment.
Waiting for wizards to print some new blowout card advantage engine and make me take this all back.
Now I'm testing the 3x serum + 2x obsessions. Maybe a bit too much but I want to see how much this filter/draw package helps. Making the deck shorter is very useful post side to dig for bullets, having extra 1cmc drops is so much better than having pseudo one drops ( refering to the 3x obsessions I had in my previous version of the deck) or too many 2-3cmc drops which make your deck so clunky in absence of vial.
So, this is where I'm at with UW Spirits. Big up for SV really, I ve been on this card one year ago when I still did not have eough experience to understand the role of it in the curve. Now I feel like I know how to extract the maximum value out of it and the perception is that of a deck that is capable of keeping hands i would have normally sent back just because SV allows you to dig 3 cards deep to search the type of card you are in need of.
UW control is a matchup where I tend not to exted my hand either, but would you actually prefer having 2x GQ in place of Mutavaults just to deal with their mid/late game threats? I mean, colonade and azcanta are a concern, but it feel like my task is to approach lethal damage by that stage, and if they managed to prevent me from racing, then I'm doomed anyways, because their PW are going to generate the value they need to outplay me from there on. I'm not saying GQ has no utility, but that extra Mutavaults better fit the aggro plan we are supposed to pull off. This is why I gave up on the surgical extraction plan long ago: the goal here is not to prevent them from threating us with one of their late game win conditions, but to get them to have no time to recur to these.
What's your opinion on Damping Sphere versus Eidolon of Rhetoric? I see how the former is so important to deal with tron post side, i also can't get rid of Eidolon as it is so damn good against a plethora of decks, from combos to mardu, jeskay, blue moon and aggro too, especially when I'm on the play.
I have longly thought about hurkyl's recall, and I did play with it for months. Eventually, I wrote down the matchups where hurkyl and stony were spendable, and my results say Hurkyl's good against Whirls decks( blows up ensnaring bridge and all of the garbage they have landed on the board), affinity ( which is a bit out of meta nowadays) and red prison deck, because of chalice and bridges again. Stony is an all-round anti artifact hate card you want to have against affinity, hardened scales, kci, nauseam, lantern and whirl decks and tron. I ended up relying on stony for my anty artifact plan and switching hurkyl with echoing truth as it's just as good at bouncing every kind of cage, plus it's way more flexible. What made you pend towards hurkyl insead of Echoing?
How often have you had issues with casting your coloured spells? with a mention to Auriok Champion which has a prohibitive WW casting cost
Have you ever felt 5x counterspells post side to be too much? which are the matchups where you absolutely need that amount of counterspells to deal with your opponent? I ve been on 3x since november 2017 and they have always felt enough.
Do you think Horizon canopy is a 'must have' in this deck and (given we all know how good the cycling ability is) how often the extra damage has given you troubles? How many times you found yourself in a spot where you had to adjust your plans in order to reduce the impact of that land on your life total?
Regarding Curious Obsession, you have told me you actually like it in the UW control matchup post side. I do agree that CO forces action on their part which puts us in the spot to use rattlechains and generate advantage, but doesn't holding CO mainboard against UW feel like holding phantasmal image mainboard against Jeskai? Especially in a postsideboard game where they know how they have to play and what kind of hand they are supposed to start with, which reduced the variability you can exploit on G1 when they might have kept a removal light hand due to the lack of informations about what's going on on your side.
I'm curious to know how your sideboarding looks like against UW.
Speaking of Moorland haunt, I've found out it's good enough to justify its coexistence with RiP in a number of matchups, one of which is Mardu. If the deck I'm facing is putting a fast clock, like dredge, hollow and vengevine, then I'm happy trimming that land when I'm on the draw, both because of RiP and because it's unlikely it's going to be impactful against those go wide decks. Against midrange, instead, I still want that land because it's still providing mana under rest in peace, and it's helping me so much generating value if no RiP has shown up. Rip can shut them down for a larg part of their strategy, but if i don't get to draw it, or i get it discarded on T1,I very much need moorland to keep up with their mass of spot removals. I could say the same of vials+stony silence against tron, but don't want to dilute here.
Now Assassin's trophy is bringing up midrange, so I believe Moorland is still a reasonable pick as a one of. UW control, Spirits, and Humans are also good matchups to have that land mainboard.
One last less specific question: do you adjust your sideboard choices depending whether you re on the play or on the draw?