Last Wednesday Night I played a small 3 round competitive event at my LGS, and really enjoyed the deck. I only dropped games to UW Control in the final round. I got my single Narset sucked up by a D. Sphere, and then in the second game only ever saw one land for ages. I probably should have mulliganed, but I had tons of ways to interact, and my plan (which was successful) was to Commandeer the Search for Azcanta and use it to filter to land. Unfortunately I had to flip it and let it eat a Field of Ruin just to get a land. I look-binned/drew no lands for 6 turns. Pretty bad. Friday Night Magic was less impressive. I met with two of what I feel may be our worst matchups, Burn and Humans. The second Burn game I always felt a topdeck away from closing it out, and in the second Humans game I landed Notion Thief/Day's Undoing into the wrong half of my deck, especially considering that he had Cavern of Souls. I also lost to the new Blue Moon with Ral, Storm's Conduit, but both of those games felt close. All in all, it felt super weird. I'm wondering if we have any ways to up the consistency. Also contemplating Boomerang for the deck.
Thanks for the results! What list were you playing?
So far Teferi, Time Raveler has felt good against both creature decks and combo/control decks. Ticking down to deal with permanents and get an extra draw is awesome, but my favorite part about him is getting to Wrath/Day's at instant speed. So far the mana hasn't been too much of a problem running 3 colors, I went up 1 more land to have room for a few more fetches while still keeping the basic count high. I also cut one Geier Reach for a plains which has been nice against field of ruin/path, though I do miss the extra combo piece. Verdict being blue, (and also being 4 cmc) has been great in place of damnation, and obviously it deals with creatures better than Engulf. Haven't tested Dovin's Veto yet, mostly because I'm not sure where I can fit it in.
In order to lock the opponent out of drawing cards with lore broker and Notion Thief's ability, you must activate the looting effect in response to them drawing a card on their draw step, so they immediately loot, not drawing the card for the loot, and discarding the card they just drew, with you also drawing an extra card due to Notion Thief's ability.
I would rephrase that a little bit because it might be a bit confusing for newer players. The way its phrased here would suggest that you want to activate the looting before they draw their card for the turn. Obviously, you can't respond to the normal card drawn in the draw step, as drawing your normal card is not a trigger and the draw step starts with players drawing a card without anyone getting priority.
I know what you mean and the combo is correct to work here, but I would just say: Activate the loot effect in your opponents draw step.
Thanks for that; you're absolutely right it could be misleading the way I worded it.
I am currently building two additionnal versions of the narset lock combo: esper Spirit of the Labyrinth prison/miracles, and bant (maybe splash black for thief) turbofog. I will report when both have reached a level worthy of publication. I also think locking the deck in mono blue just for the pitching isn't very rewarding, and Teferi's puzzle box seems to be actually quite insane with Narset/thief: even with an unrefined version of the deck, it kills the opponent very easily.
I still think Teferi's puzzle box is bad, but I haven't tested it at all. Pros: it locks the opponent out completely with just 1 card in addition to Narset or Thief. Cons: it does basically nothing when you don't have Narset/Thief in play. Day's, Lore Broker and Geier Reach/Mikokoro all do at least a little something when you don't have a Narset/Thief, and they all help you draw into Thief where Puzzle box doesn't if you don't have much in hand, being 4 mana and sorcery speed also sucks.
That being said, if it is tested and is found to be a viable replacement to Day's/Thief it could save us some slots, (from 11 down to 4+ however many of the old combo pieces we may want to keep for consistency), and cutting cards out of the combo slots will help our interaction suite a ton; so even if it's a slightly worse card when we aren't comboing it, maybe that's ok because the rest of the deck is more efficient anyways with the saved slots.
On the topic of trying different colors: I am currently attempting to brew an esper list myself, (though not for playing Spirit of the Labyrinth). I'm interested in getting to play Supreme Verdict, Dovin's Veto, Path to Exile and my personal favorite, Teferi, Time Raveler. Other than path, they are all still blue cards so they don't interfere with our pitch plan, (a huge plus for Verdict over Damnation, where Engulf just doesn't feel like enough a lot of the time), and Teferi, Time Raveler is a) another answer to both creatures, which the deck struggles with, and b) can also hit resolved artifacts and enchantments which helps a ton because we don't have a lot that can interact with those if they hit the board, being able to hit Aethervial is great, and also making Void Snare instant speed is sweet. Being able to play Day's at instant speed is great too. Teferi's passive also hurts some opponent's naturally and also makes our lock with Thief instant-proof. The awkward part is the mana base. We need lots of blue sources and still have to splash black for Thief, so playing lots of basics is harder when we need 3 colors, (notably WW to cast verdict), but not playing as many basics hurts our borderposts a ton. So do we cut border posts or just play a few basics and then a ton of fetches to make sure we can always find a basic if we need to play a post. Let me know what you guys think here.
I disagree on the "do nothing" part of puzzle box: it's an incredibly effective digging engine that will make you go through so many cards you'd be highly unlucky not to hit Narset or Thief or any card you're actually looking for while already disturbing your opponent's gameplan. I wasn't on the box team, but trying it out just for a few games sold it to me!
Puzzle box only filters cards if you already had cards in hand when you cast it whereas Day's can be topdecked and still give you 7 cards no matter what. Enough people are saying it has tested well though so I may give it a shot.
I am currently building two additionnal versions of the narset lock combo: esper Spirit of the Labyrinth prison/miracles, and bant (maybe splash black for thief) turbofog. I will report when both have reached a level worthy of publication. I also think locking the deck in mono blue just for the pitching isn't very rewarding, and Teferi's puzzle box seems to be actually quite insane with Narset/thief: even with an unrefined version of the deck, it kills the opponent very easily.
I still think Teferi's puzzle box is bad, but I haven't tested it at all. Pros: it locks the opponent out completely with just 1 card in addition to Narset or Thief. Cons: it does basically nothing when you don't have Narset/Thief in play. Day's, Lore Broker and Geier Reach/Mikokoro all do at least a little something when you don't have a Narset/Thief, and they all help you draw into Thief where Puzzle box doesn't if you don't have much in hand, being 4 mana and sorcery speed also sucks.
That being said, if it is tested and is found to be a viable replacement to Day's/Thief it could save us some slots, (from 11 down to 4+ however many of the old combo pieces we may want to keep for consistency), and cutting cards out of the combo slots will help our interaction suite a ton; so even if it's a slightly worse card when we aren't comboing it, maybe that's ok because the rest of the deck is more efficient anyways with the saved slots.
On the topic of trying different colors: I am currently attempting to brew an esper list myself, (though not for playing Spirit of the Labyrinth). I'm interested in getting to play Supreme Verdict, Dovin's Veto, Path to Exile and my personal favorite, Teferi, Time Raveler. Other than path, they are all still blue cards so they don't interfere with our pitch plan, (a huge plus for Verdict over Damnation, where Engulf just doesn't feel like enough a lot of the time), and Teferi, Time Raveler is a) another answer to both creatures, which the deck struggles with, and b) can also hit resolved artifacts and enchantments which helps a ton because we don't have a lot that can interact with those if they hit the board, being able to hit Aethervial is great, and also making Void Snare instant speed is sweet. Being able to play Day's at instant speed is great too. Teferi's passive also hurts some opponent's naturally and also makes our lock with Thief instant-proof. The awkward part is the mana base. We need lots of blue sources and still have to splash black for Thief, so playing lots of basics is harder when we need 3 colors, (notably WW to cast verdict), but not playing as many basics hurts our borderposts a ton. So do we cut border posts or just play a few basics and then a ton of fetches to make sure we can always find a basic if we need to play a post. Let me know what you guys think here.
(As an aside, playing UW Control for the longest and watching Sultai Reclamation not only go under everything I was doing but also out-value me in the process... it felt so, so sweet playing Pitch Blue and flipping the script on them lol)
I don't like the line of play after 1:15 where OP plays the 2nd remand targeting Narset. By Commandeering targeting 1 remand and then aiming that remand at spell snare, and then tapping out to recast spell snare, yet you get both remands out of the OP's hand and also get your Narset in play, but you just tapped out, with no free interaction in hand to protect Narset, and you know the OP has a mystical teachings in hand from when you remanded it earlier, meaning there is no way your Narset survives unless you find a pitch spell off of the -2. If you don't Commandeer at least you get to keep your Narset & spell snare in hand while also holding up both Commandeer & spell snare for the OP's turn. If you do Commandeer a remand, aim it at the other remand so that you resolve the Narset and hold one mana up, meaning you have another hit with the -2 to potentially have some interaction to keep her alive, (obviously OP went for ubrubt decay instead of trophy, however, meaning that the first option of not Commandeering is best).
Also revealing that you have a Notion Thief by casting it when Teachings is on the stack seems questionable. There's no way the OP doesn't search for something to kill your Thief. Wait for them to hopefully get greedy, or pick the wrong bit of interaction with Teachings and then try and play it after they already chose what card they want. Basically, I think you could have baited the opponent into doing what they did at 3:20ish a lot earlier, (tapping out on their turn so that you can Thief into Day's which probably wins you the game.)
2. Those cards (Snapback, Shoal, Commandeer) are just very situational cards and not worth building around and playing bad card to like Borderpost (and mediocre bouncespells) to fuel them imho.
Black gets tou much better options like real removal: Fatal Push, Cast Down (Go For the Throat/Murderous Cut) and Collective Brutality as hand disruption (and additional effects).
Bouncespells alone (and Shoal) aren't good enough for efficiently interacting and not playing any "real" removal or discard spells (or more countermagic) isn't a great idea imho.
I think this point is moot, considering the pitch functionality of the deck. You literally just toss the useless spells to cast free cards that are relevant and then you refill your hand. You are not wrong in saying that they are situational, but your evaluation of how impactful they are is quite skewed.
Borderpost is rather insane in this deck.
In addition to pitching bad cards, we can always loot them away; the deck doesn't care about having situational cards because if you have other uses for said cards you don't care when they are bad nearly as much.
Just making sure (think I saw this on the stream, but double checking) if I were to have both Narset, Parter of Veils and Notion Thief on the battlefield, then the Narset just overrides the Thief’s ability? It’s not a “what entered the battlefield last” incident, right?
It's an interesting interaction. The rules text for Narset, Parter of Veils from Gatherer states:
Replacement effects (such as that of Underrealm Lich or the first ability of Jace, Wielder of Mysteries) can’t be used to replace draws that Narset disallows. However, if an opponent’s first draw is replaced (by Underrealm Lich’s ability, for example), that draw didn’t happen and Narset won’t stop the next draw (which may also be replaced by Underrealm Lich’s ability).
This means that if you activate a looting ability during the opponent's upkeep, (meaning they haven't drawn a card yet this turn), Narset allows the draw to happen, and then Thief's ability cancels the draw and gives you a card. When the opponent's draw phase comes, Narset's ability doesn't prevent the draw, because the opponent hasn't actually drawn a card yet and Thief doesn't care about the draw step draw, so the opponent ends up getting that card.
If you activate the looting ability after the opponent has drawn their card in the draw step, Narset's ability kicks in and stops them from drawing another card, so they discard the one they just drew, (assuming 0 cards in hand at the begging of the turn), and because they never drew a card that wasn't the initial draw step one, Notion Thief's ability never triggers.
Let's say you cast a Day's Undoing with both out during your turn, and the opponent hasn't drawn any cards this turn. The first card the opponent attempts to draw is allowed by Narset, but then gets cancelled by Thief, so you get an extra. The 2nd card isn't canceled by Narset, because the opponent never drew the first card, so Thief kicks in, cancels that draw also, and then gives you another. This means that by the end of casting the Day's Undoing, your opponent will have 0 cards and you will have 14, (7 from your draws from Days, and 7 from the Thief's ability.) Also let it be noted: if something is preventing the opponent's draw in their draw step from happening, (ex. Colfenor's Plans) then each time they would go to draw a card Thief's ability would cancel it, so Narset never triggers, and you end up with the extra cards.
To recap: If you want to draw an extra card and you have both Notion Thief and Narset, Parter of Veils out, trigger the loot before the first draw of the turn; if you want to lock the opponent out of keeping cards in their hand activate the loot after the initial draw of the draw step.
I’ve watched the deck being played and I absolutely love it. For people who appear to be making suggestions and critiquing cards without seeing how they perform, I’d suggest you watch some gameplay; you’re not really helping much if you’re trying to make suggestions to something that you don’t properly understand. Seeing a decklist and seeing it played are two completely different things.
That being said, I am possibly worried about one aspect of the deck: it’s ability to kill with the lock out. Just so I understand properly, is the lock of Lore Broker + Narset, Parter of Veils while Hellbent an absolute lock, or are the opponents still able to cast instant-speed effects? If they can’t, then this is one of the most beautiful decks I have ever seen lol. If they can interact however, then I’m a bit afraid that we kill too slowly before they’re able to potentially break out of the lock. I could be wrong of course, I’m only human.
Thanks for the sick primer as well : )
A few key differences between the two passive effects on Narset, Parter of Veils/Notion Thief, however:
1) Notion Thief's ability stops every draw other than the opponent's normal draw during their draw step, this means that if you make the opponent loot on your turn, or draw on your turn, they don't draw any cards, whereas Narset, Parter of Veils sets a cap for 1 card each turn, so if you loot on your turn the opponent draws a card as normal.
2) In order to lock the opponent out of drawing cards with lore broker and Notion Thief's ability, you must activate the looting effect in response to them drawing a card on their draw step, so they immediately loot, not drawing the card for the loot, and discarding the card they just drew, with you also drawing an extra card due to Notion Thief's ability. This has the drawback of the opponent being able to cast instants in response to the loot trigger, unlike Narset, Parter of Veils where you can make them loot during their upkeep, so they draw 1 and discard 1, and then they don't get the draw for the draw step, meaning if they had 0 cards in hand when you activated the looting ability there's no time for them to cast the card that they draw before they have to discard it, (obviously madness cards get around this).
I don't think that the "pitch" spells are worth playing.
Using the efficient black spells is just much better and the deck already needs black for Notion Thief anyway.
It seems rather hard to close out games with this deck, I'd at least want some number of Creeping Tar Pit to help with that replacing Mistvein Borderpost.
1. Teferi's Puzzle Box is just a slower, worse, Day's Undoing; not really what the deck wants.
2. The blue pitch spells are absolutely worth playing, they are the reason why we get essentially free wins vs control decks and most other combo decks, and are essential to getting our combo online fast enough while holding up protection for it on the same turn. We don't really need any black spells in most of our matchups, the only really good on that comes to mind is damnation which is still questionable.
3. It's really not hard to close out games. Vendilion Clique and Notion Thief both beat in for 3 and our opponent has to get through both our draw lock and our handful of counter/bounce spells to stop them. Not really an issue. Creeping Tar Pit is slow and Mistvein Borderpost is often the best card in the deck when we can pitch it to fuel our other spells.
It seems like you're just goldfishing with your suggestions and haven't actually played much with the deck. It functions surprising well with the current list, we don't need to be changing our entire gameplan by dropping the pitch spells or swapping out combo pieces I don't think. That being said feel free to try out your suggestions and come back to us with the results. If they end up panning out then more power to you.
I think people are getting the deck wrong for a few reasons. Sticking to an absurdly high amount of blue spells just to fuel unfair instants is a bit of a gimp. You start to lose matchup spread against decks that punish for not answering their go-wide strategies.
While this is partly true, one of the reasons that the blue pitch spells are so powerful is that it lets us tap out to play our sorcery-speed combo pieces while still holding up interaction; but against aggro decks that may not have a lot of interaction I think it's fine to sideboard in some none-blue hate cards, while siding out useless interaction spells in those matchups like -2 Commandeer +2 Yahenni's Expertise is probably fine, and the ability to combo into a Day's Undoing, Ashiok, Dream Render or Narset, Parter of Veils is pretty sweet. Only dealing with 3 toughness or less creatures kind of sucks, it does nothing vs green stompy, Primeval Titan, Tarmogoyf, Death's Shadow, and Gurmag Angler etc, so I'm not sure it's worth it in place of something like Damnation. Also 4 cmc is a little high for the deck, especially with it also needing double black on top of that.
It goes very well with my two favorite cards in modern, that is Vendilion Clique and.... Burning Inquiry. I'll ponder around a UR list soon.
A UR version is something I've been wanting to try, obviously it makes the pitch blue cards slightly worse, but the upside for having better & faster discard may be worth it. Can't wait to see what you come up with!
One thing you might want to mention about dredge is that they turn Narset and Notion Thief off outright as long as they have a dredge card in the graveyard due to their ability to replace their own draws. Day's Undoing avoids this particular pitfall with its graveyard reshuffle, but it risks leaving you defenseless.
Prison is another one of this deck's weird matchups due to Ensnaring Bridge. 8rack, in particular, can be a rout one way or another if they pluck the right cards out of your hand.
I'd also be careful about Mistvein Borderpost if I were you. It behaves like a ETBT dual land most of the time, but other times it's most definitely a bad mana rock. Its status as lands 19-22 is dependent on having a fetchland or basic in the same hand, which is going to result in a few more mulligans than if that slot were given to actual lands (or cantrips, really). It's a colored artifact, which makes it really bad against Tron because you'll lose it to both Ugin and Karn, the Great Creator. You also need to watch your number of non-island lands if Engulf the Shore is going to be your sweeper of choice, since the difference between 2 and 3 Islands is huge in many matchups.
Yeah all of this was more matchup specific stuff that I said I would go into more once the deck has a little more testing done. Good points all around, especially with dredge being able to kind of get around the combo. As far as the border posts go, yes they are incredibly bad vs lots of Tron's payoffs, the plan is to never let those payoffs hit the batttlefield, (Commandeer can take most of them, and Ashiok Dream Render can slow them down a fair bit. I have played a few times against Tron and it feels like a decent matchup, though it may be worthwhile to side in blast zones and side out a few Mistvein Borderposts or something; but I am very hesitant to cut them from the mainboard entirely because I think their upside far outweighs the downside in a few specific matchups. Ensnaring Bridge is an interesting one, because we don't have an alternate win con aside from combat damage currently, however we have a good number of cards that can stop it from hitting the battlefield, destroy it with Blast Zone, (a little awkward because of the cmc hitting a lot of our stuff too) or bouncing it. This is definitely a card to look out for and see how beatable it is with the current list, but I think until then the list should be more oriented towards keeping the good matchups good and improving the bad matchups.
Ever since Narset, Parter of Veils was spoiled, people have been talking about her. Denying your opponents the ability to draw extra cards is already really good, but when you factor in her ability to make previously symmetrical drawing effects asymmetrical her power level sky-rockets. Combos have been talked about all over the internet, but so far the most complete deck list I have seen came from [REDACTED]
The deck is looking to abuse symmetrical card draw effects and the passive ability of Narset, Parter of Veils to break the symmetry of said effects in our favor. Cards like Day's Undoing become 1 sided 3 mana draw 7, while our opponent has to shuffle their hand into their library, which is obviously incredibly powerful.
Another powerful option for abusing Narset draw only 1 clause is looting effects: activate Lore Broker during the opponent's turn during their upkeep, (i.e. before their draw step), both of you loot, and then when the opponent's draw step comes they don't get to draw because they already drew 1 during the loot. This means that we can lock our opponent out of ever drawing cards, and doing it during their upkeep means that they cannot cast the card at instant speed, (because the draw and discard effect from the loot happens at the same time they never have a chance to react to having a card in their hand). Geier Reach Sanitarium is an additional looting effect on a land, and mikokoro, center of the sea is a one sided howling mine.
We are only allowed to play 4 copies of Narset, Parter of Veils, fortunately, Notion Thief is a creature with a very similar effect that we can also abuse with our symmetrical draw/looting effects, I will go more into depth the difference between the two in the "Guide to Playing the Deck" section.
Aside from our symmetrical draw/looting effects to combo with Narset or Notion Thief, we are also playing a ton of interaction to both slow our opponent down till we get the combo online, and also to keep our combo pieces safe. These interaction cards are fairly interesting, however, because of all of the extra cards we have in hand from Day's Undoing we get to play cards like Disrupting Shoal because the card disadvantage of exiling cards from our hand isn't as big when you have 1 sided draw 7s etc.
The deck relies on having Disrupting Shoal to slow our opponent down and keep our combo pieces alive, so having a good spread of converted mana costs in our spells, especially in game 1, is very important. Because of this, it is worthwhile playing spells that may not be as good on their own vs another option in order to keep our cmc spread out enough. If we go up against something like Death's Shadow, we want to have Vapor Snags, Spell Snares and Spell Pierces to pitch in order to counter all of their 1 cmc stuff; even if it seems like there's better options to replace those cards; the cmc is also a key factor.
Narset, Parter of Veils The core of the deck: she digs for extra cards and combos with our stuff by breaking the symmetry of "each player draws x cards" effects, also is just naturally good against some decks with lots of cantrips.
Notion Thief servers as backup copies of Narset, and can also beat in for 3 to close out the game. It doesn't draw us cards immediately like Narset does, but also breaks the symmetry even better with Day's Undoing, Lore Broker etc. by letting us draw the cards our opponent would have drawn! A few key differences between the two passive effects, however:
1) Notion Thief's ability stops every draw other than the opponent's normal draw during their draw step, this means that if you make the opponent loot on your turn, or draw on your turn, they don't draw any cards, whereas Narset, Parter of Veils sets a cap for 1 card each turn, so if you loot on your turn the opponent draws a card as normal.
2) In order to lock the opponent out of drawing cards with lore broker and Notion Thief's ability, you must activate the looting effect during their draw step, (i.e. right after they draw their draw step card) so they immediately loot, not drawing the card for the loot, and discarding the card they just drew, with you also drawing an extra card due to Notion Thief's ability. This has the drawback of the opponent being able to cast instants in response to the loot trigger, unlike Narset, Parter of Veils where you can make them loot during their upkeep, so they draw 1 and discard 1, and then they don't get the draw for the draw step, meaning if they had 0 cards in hand when you activated the looting ability there's no time for them to cast the card that they draw before they have to discard it, (obviously madness cards get around this).
Lore Broker Our combo piece used with either Narset or Notion Thief to lock our opponent out of drawing cards, while also making them discard any cards they have in hand if we can activate more than one. While being vulnerable to almost every creature removal spell ever is an obvious downside, we have a lot of cards that can protect it, and it can also beat in for damage or block, keeping either us or Narset alive, so it's not too bad a trade off. It doesn't have a very large impact on the game unless a) our opponent is already very low/empty handed and b) we have a resolved Narset/Thief. Cards like Jace's Archivist, and Teferi's Puzzle Box are harder to get going but have a larger impact on the game, both before we are comboing and after.
Teferi's Puzzle Box Combos with both Narset and Thief to lock our opponent out of drawing cards. Teferi's Puzzle Box has a number of upsides and downsides when compared as a combo piece to Lore Broker. First and foremost, it's not blue :\. It is, however, a way to instantly get our opponent empty handed when combined with Narset/Thief, as opposed to Lore Broker where it only stops our opponents from drawing more cards, it doesn't deal with anything already in their hand. The Puzzle Box is also better at drawing you into your combo pieces, though it does it in a weird and random way that you have no control over, you do get to see a lot more cards with a resolved Puzzle Box than with a Broker. Not being a creature means that it can't chump block, but it also means that our opponent has to have artifact hate to remove it, meaning we have planeswalkers, creatures, lands, and artifacts as options for our combo pieces so it means our opponent has to have a larger variety of answers to stop us from locking them out.
Jace's Archivist A weird combination of Teferi's Puzzle Box, Day's Undoing and Lore Broker all on a 2/2 body. Like Broker, it dies to pretty much everything, (though 3 cmc means it doesn't get hit with non-revolted Fatal Push. The one mana activation usually doesn't matter much, and it has the ability to get your opponent locked out of having cards in their hand instantly with Thief/Narset, whereas Broker and Sanitarium both need a Day's to get the opponent empty handed. Archivist is also nice because it allows us to very quickly see a bunch of cards in our deck to find a Thief or Narset if we don't already have one. Also we can somewhat break they symmetry by dumping our hand via free pitch spells while our opponent is casting things at a slower rate. Note that unlike Day's and Puzzle Box, Archivist actually discards the card(s) to the graveyard, meaning it works better with flashback, (see: Echo of Eons).
Day's Undoing while it is very rarely a good idea to cast Day's Undoing in other decks, we love it! Not only are we able to break the symmetry of the card draw, making it so only we draw cards but our opponent still has to shuffle their hand and graveyard away already makes this amazing, we can abuse Day's Undoing even more by also playing "pitch blue" cards such asDisrupting Shoal that let us exile blue cards from our hand instead of paying their mana cost. Day's Undoing effectively gives us more ammo for our free interaction so we don't care that we may be spending 2-3 cards to do with one of our oppoenent's cards, (2-3-for-1-ing ourselves if you will). Also a combo piece working as incidental graveyard hate is more relevant now than ever, so that's nice. Also if mill ever becomes a viable deck (lol) it helps there too. Note: If you are planning on casting a Day's Undoing and you have Narset out you can tick down before you Days to try and find an answer to a resolved threat, but usually it's the right idea to save your Narset tick downs for the next turn.)
Geier Reach Sanitarium works in the same way as Lore Broker except that you have to pay for each activation. Being a land and not a spell also has some upsides and downsides. The upsides: it doesn't take up a slot in our nonland cards, it doesn't die to creature removal like Lore Broker and it doesn't require and mana to play it. The Downsides: it takes 2 mana to activate, and similar to how Storm Crow is the best card in magic because you can pitch it to Force of Will, Geier Reach Sanitarium is not a blue card and therefore cannot be pitched to any of our free spells, (or found with Narset's -2 for that matter), it also cannot block to save us/Narset from damage and cannot attack to close out the game. Also not tapping for blue mana or being a basic land, (more on that can be found in the "Wait a second, that's not a land" section of "Card Selection" down below) is a significant downside, so currently we're only running 1.
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea has all of the same downsides as Geier Reach Sanitarium, and also doesn't serve as a lock piece with Narset or Notion Thief, it does, however, servers as card advantage with both, where the looting effect of Geier Reach Sanitarium is only card advantage with [Notion Thief]. It's possible that this should just be a second Geier Reach Sanitarium, or some other land.
(Fair interaction are cards that interact with our opponents that don't have alternate casting costs, meaning we have to use mana to cast them; spells with alternate casting costs will be referred to as "pitch spells".)
Spell Pierce Spell pierce is one of those cards that is amazing against some decks and completely dead against others. 1 mana to counter a noncreature spell is useful against a lot of decks in the early game, especially because they won't be expecting it game 1, however it does nothing against creature decks, very little against ramp decks and becomes fairly useless in the late game, though you can pitch it to any of our pitch spells at least. Stopping path and bolt to keep our combo pieces is very relevant so some amount of them should be played in the 75.
Spell Snare Another narrow interaction card, it hits different things that spell pierce may not hit, again it's less dead in our deck than it would be in others because we can pitch it to our free spells at the very least. Still not an amazing answer as it is far from a "catch-all", but hopefully it'll do.
Vapor Snag Useful to help stall if your opponent is play creatures, though it is worse against things like Goblin Guide that have haste and can attack again next turn, instead of having to wait for summoning sickness to wear off, and even worse against Goblin Electromancer in storm if they can combo off while the vapor snag is on the stack; obviously it is better not to let creatures resolve but that's not usually possible to catch them all. This would be better if it was a more permanent answer like fatal push, but it is important that we have a high density of blue cards for our pitch spells to function, so we work with what we have.
Void Snare A potential replacement for Vapor Snag. The life loss from Snag is irrelevant, but losing instant speed is a big downside. The upside, however, is having maindeck answers for resolved non-creature permanents which our deck is pretty bad at dealing with. Staying in the 1 cmc slot is also important when looking for alternatives to Vapor Snag.
Flusterstorm The most "gotcha" counterspell of all of our conditional countermagic, sometimes Flusterstorm is a massive blowout for 1 mana, othertimes it is unbelievably dead in hand. Good versus storm and control decks etc, could be a sideboard card if your meta is heavy with those, though I wouldn't recommend putting it in the main no matter how funny it is when it works.
Remand Very good in some matchups, and at least ok in that it cantrips in others, Remand can slow our opponent down by a lot if utilized correctly. Also has a cool synergy where you can remand your own card in response to a counterspell targetting your card so that it remains in your hand and the counterspell fizzles. It can't do anything about resolved cards, however, which brings us to our next card:
Unsubstantiate Sometimes it's a worse Remand, but being able to hit resolved creatures is a big deal because the rest of the deck isn't great at dealing with those, especially in game one.
Commit // Memory A catch-all answer to resolved permmanents, and has the bonus of also functioning as a Day's Undoing in a pinch, note: we can discard it to looting or to hand size in order to cast the Memory side if need be.
Vendilion Clique A win con, a chump blocker and a piece of interaction all in one, the only thing holding Vendilion Clique back is its 3 cmc mana cost and the fact that it's legendary, though that doesn't come up too often. It does combo nicely with Narset or Thief to function as a pure Thoughtseize so the opponent doesn't get to draw a card. Honestly it would be way better in this deck if it was a 1/3 to help block and stabilize against creature decks in the early game, but I guess trading with something isn't the worst thing in the world.
Tyrant's Scorn Our deck's version of Fatal Push. Though it costs one extra mana, we get to count it as a blue spell, (meaning it can be pitched), as well as a little bounce utility for things that Push would usually miss. Or sometimes bouncing creatures is more effective than actually killing them. cough bloodghast cough cough
Thing in the Ice :rate4.5:]A blocker to save both us and Narset some damage, TITI also functions as a board wipe and a win con! If put in the deck you probably want to run some amount of cheap cantrips, (swapping out some amount of our 1 mana interaction spells for Serum Visions/Opt usually does the trick). TITI is one of the best answers to fast creature decks in blue, fortunately there's not very many creatures with the horror type that are played in modern, so the bounce effect is almost always "bounce all other creatures", a big step up from other blue board wipe effects. Can also be comboed with Day's Undoing, if the Day's is the 4th instant/sorcery spell cast after playing TITI, the TITI bounce trigger will go on the stack before the Day's Undoing resolves. Meaning the creatures will get bounced and then suffled into the opponent's library as soon as the Day's resolves. Pretty nice trick that costs a lot less mana to do than trying to combo Day's Undoing with Engulf the Shore, Aetherize etc.
Dead of Winter [rate=4.0]] Not a blue card, but it is one of the better wrath options available to us. Replacing our islands with Snow-Covered Island is easy, and we already play a good amount of basics to make the Borderposts work. It's a turn faster than both Engulf the Shore and Damnation, while also hitting the same amount of creatures as Engulf and being easier to cast than Damnation, (one black versus 2 black in the casting cost is a big deal for us, especially in the early game where we really need a board wipe to stabilize). Killing things is also, (usually) better than bouncing them to hand.
Disrupting ShoalForce of Will's lazy cousin: it requires a little more work to get it running, but it does the job usually. We have a good spread of cmc cards in the deck to utilize its effect, and we can even cast it for x=4, 7 or 10 if we have to, (Commit / Memory counts as a 10cmc card, and though Commandeer may feel like it has a cmc of 0 most of the time, it does technically cost 7. Also with the amount of card draw we have we can sometimes hard cast it for cheaper cards in the late game.
Any cards with an X in their mana cost have X=0 when you exile them to Disrupting Shoal.
When paying the alternate cost for Disrupting Shoal, the value of X in its mana cost still changes, and therefore the total cmc of Disrupting Shoal changes accordingly. (Even when it's cast for 0 mana it still has a cmc of 2+X, which is relevant vs things like Eidolon of the Great Revel
Any cards with an X in their mana cost cast by an opponent have X= to whatever it was cast for when figuring out the spell's cmc.
Commandeer My personal favorite of our free pitch spells, it is extremely good at shutting down our opponent's gameplan out of nowhere, and sometimes just winning us the game on the spot, (no, actually that's myKarn Liberated), though it can also take less flashy things like Lightning Helix against Burn to gain life, function as a sort of counterspell etc. Not good against creature decks for obvious reasons, but there's extras in the sideboard for when they are particularly good. Also worth noting that Commandeer is less narrow than Disrupting Shoal, so even if you really want to take something for yourself, keep in mind that you may want to use your more narrow answers when they work and keep the catch-all ones for things that the more narrow cards can't hit.
Commandeer is a bit of an interesting card with some complicated rules interactions, we'll start with the simple ones and work our way up.
Instants and sorceries go into their owner's, (the opponent's) graveyard when they resolve, unless a buyback or flashback cost ways payed, in which case the card goes into their owner's hand or exile respectively.
Any permanents that you Commandeer go into your opponent's graveyard/hand should they leave the battlefield: not your own.
You cannot change modes or pay additional costs of the spell you Commandeer, you can only change targets, (you also cannot pay any values for X in the spells mana cost; the X value remains the same as what the opponent originally cast it for.
You must chose a valid target as the spell resolves. Meaning if you Commandeer a Fatal Push and the only available creature is your Lore Broker you must end up targeting the Lore Broker. If the target that you select is illegal as the spell resolves then it has no effect as usual.
If the target spell has any copies you only gain control of the spell that you target, the other copies will be controlled by the opponent who cast the original spell. (Don't bank on taking a Grapeshot because you'll still take the damage from all of the copies)
Any instances of "you" in the spell now refer to you and not the opponent, (this can be important with things such as landfall effects, or the 2 damage from Thoughtseize. Any instances of "your opponents"/"each opponent" etc. now refer to your opponent and not you.
Snapback doesn't do anything to hexproof creatures and isn't great against hastey ones or ones with abilities that can be abused at instant speed like Baral, Chief of Compliance or evenGriselbrand, but at least it's a potentially free answer to most resolved creatures, which the deck can really struggle with. Also can bounce your own creatures to save them from removal or even get another Thoughtseize out of Vendilion Clique.
Force of Negation "The madlads did it! They printed Force of Will in modern!" Well, not quite. Though new Force is incredibly powerful, it is more limited, (which is probably a good thing, I don't think a functional reprint of Force of Will would be good for the modern format). Another free counter spell is good for the deck, however it is far worse than Disrupting Shoal in practice: Shoal, (and commandeer to a lesser extent]] serves 2 key functions in our deck. Yes, it disrupts our opponents without us having to commit mana, but it also lets us tap out/low for our sorcery speed combo pieces while still holding up protection for them. Force of Negation does not do this. As it is only free if it is not our turn, so if the opponent has something like a Dreadbore, Force is effectively useless if the opponent casts Dreadbore right after Narset/Thief etc. resolves. Similarly, it doesn't help us resolve a Narset/Broker/Puzzle Box/Archivist/Day's in a counter war, because we have to cast those during our turn. We can flash in Thief and have Force be online for counterspells, but that's only one of our 6 combo pieces.
Mistvein Borderpost These may seem like a strange decision to play, but hear me out, they are actually way better than they seem. First and foremost, lands are normally colorless, so having something that functions as a land but can be exiled to our pitch spells is a big deal, especially with 3 being a decently relevant cmc, and a lot of our other 3 cmc cards are combo pieces that we may want to keep in hand. Also being able to find them with Narset, Parter of Veils is a pretty big deal; there's a lot of times when we would -2 and get nothing if we didn't play 4 of these. Also having some small amount of ramp and some color fixing is never a bad thing.
They key win condition of the deck is to lock the opponent out of ever drawing cards with a combination of Narset, Parter of Veils/Notion Thief and a looting effect like Lore Broker by making the opponent draw a card and immediately discard it.
A few key differences between the two passive effects on Narset, Parter of Veils/Notion Thief, however:
1) Notion Thief's ability stops every draw other than the opponent's normal draw during their draw step, this means that if you make the opponent loot on your turn, or draw on your turn, they don't draw any cards, whereas Narset, Parter of Veils sets a cap for 1 card each turn, so if you loot on your turn the opponent draws a card as normal.
2) In order to lock the opponent out of drawing cards with lore broker and Notion Thief's ability, you must activate the looting effect in response to them drawing a card on their draw step, so they immediately loot, not drawing the card for the loot, and discarding the card they just drew, with you also drawing an extra card due to Notion Thief's ability. This has the drawback of the opponent being able to cast instants in response to the loot trigger, unlike Narset, Parter of Veils where you can make them loot during their upkeep, so they draw 1 and discard 1, and then they don't get the draw for the draw step, meaning if they had 0 cards in hand when you activated the looting ability there's no time for them to cast the card that they draw before they have to discard it, (obviously madness cards get around this).
It's an interesting interaction. The rules text for Narset, Parter of Veils from Gatherer states:
Replacement effects (such as that of Underrealm Lich or the first ability of Jace, Wielder of Mysteries) can’t be used to replace draws that Narset disallows. However, if an opponent’s first draw is replaced (by Underrealm Lich’s ability, for example), that draw didn’t happen and Narset won’t stop the next draw (which may also be replaced by Underrealm Lich’s ability).
This means that if you activate a looting ability during the opponent's upkeep, (meaning they haven't drawn a card yet this turn), Narset allows the draw to happen, and then Thief's ability cancels the draw and gives you a card. When the opponent's draw phase comes, Narset's ability doesn't prevent the draw, because the opponent hasn't actually drawn a card yet and Thief doesn't care about the draw step draw, so the opponent ends up getting that card.
If you activate the looting ability after the opponent has drawn their card in the draw step, Narset's ability kicks in and stops them from drawing another card, so they discard the one they just drew, (assuming 0 cards in hand at the begging of the turn), and because they never drew a card that wasn't the initial draw step one, Notion Thief's ability never triggers.
Let's say you cast a Day's Undoing with both out during your turn, and the opponent hasn't drawn any cards this turn. The first card the opponent attempts to draw is allowed by Narset, but then gets cancelled by Thief, so you get an extra. The 2nd card isn't canceled by Narset, because the opponent never drew the first card, so Thief kicks in, cancels that draw also, and then gives you another. This means that by the end of casting the Day's Undoing, your opponent will have 0 cards and you will have 14, (7 from your draws from Days, and 7 from the Thief's ability.) Also let it be noted: if something is preventing the opponent's draw in their draw step from happening, (ex. Colfenor's Plans) then each time they would go to draw a card Thief's ability would cancel it, so Narset never triggers, and you end up with the extra cards.
To recap: If you want to draw an extra card and you have both Notion Thief and Narset, Parter of Veils out, trigger the loot before the first draw of the turn; if you want to lock the opponent out of keeping cards in their hand activate the loot after the initial draw of the draw step.
In order to get the combo online, you need to do 2 things: 1) resolve your pieces and protect them and 2) get your opponent empty handed.
Resolving the combo pieces and protecting them is actually easier in this deck than in other combo decks, because of all of our free interaction spells: we don't have to wait until we can hold up mana for interaction during/after casting our combo pieces if we have a Disrupting Shoal in hand to hopefully protect it until we can untap next turn. Because our draw spells like Day's Undoing become a lot worse if we don't have a combo piece out, it is very important to get either Narset, Parter of Veils/Notion Thief on the board and keep it there as earlier as possible and as long as possible, (though obviously make sure it is safe to cast them; it sucks when you have a Remand in hand that could've countered that Ugin The Spirit Dragon but instead you tapped out hoping that Disrupting Shoal on 2 would be enough).
Getting our opponent empty handed can be done one of two ways: either they cast everything in their hand and you survive it and manage to stabilize despite this, or you cast Day's Undoing with Narset or Thief out to make them shuffle their hand away without drawing new cards, it is also possible to activate multiple looting effects, (Lore Broker etc.) during 1 turn to make the opponent start discarding extra cards.
Once the opponent is locked out of drawing cards we can close out the game by beating in with our utility creatures.
Anything that likes to cast a lot of noncreature spells is a pretty good matchup, especially decks that have a lot of card draw effects, like Control, or Storm simply because our combo pieces are already naturally good against them, and our free pitch spells let us interact with their combo in unexpected times. We also have a pretty good matchup vs things like the new Neoform decks or the Goryo's Vengeance decks that are looking to abuse the new London mulligan rule, again because our free pitch spells let us interact with them when they go for that early turn 1 or 2 kill, far earlier than most decks in the format, and also fairly consistently especially in games 2 & 3 when we can bring in additional Commandeers.
Decks like Burn, Elves and Humans are much harder to beat but not impossible; cheap and efficient creatures dodge a lot of interaction and Cavern of Souls and Aether Vial can make them even harder to interact with. Burn especially is also pretty good at killing our combo pieces, (if you can help it never tick down Narset, Parter of Veils because it puts her in bolt etc. range).
There are also some interesting matchups, where our deck functions really well vs part of their deck, but does very little vs other parts. Scapeshift/Valakut, The Molten Pinnacle/Primeval Titan decks. Scapeshift is pretty easily shut down with the likes of Commandeer, but Valakut, The Molten Pinnacle dodges all of our interaction, while Primeval Titan dodges some of it but not all. Dredge is another one of the matchups: our combo pieces are pretty sweet against their Faithless Lootings and Burning Inquirys, but their ability to dump creatures on the battlefield very quickly can lead to problems, and also sometimes our looting effects will just give them a discard outlet to discard whatever they wanted in their graveyard in the first place.
Creature/Aggro Sideboarding Blast Zone, Snapback, Dead of Winter, Tyrant's Scorn, Damnation and Engulf the Shore are all in there to help with creature matchups. Blast zone should replace Mikokoro, Center of the Sea/Geier Reach Sanitarium to not mess up the land color/count ratios. Snapback, Tyrant's Scorn and Engulf the Shore are the best answers to creatures in mono blue for the deck. It is possible that swapping these out for a few Fatal Push and Dead of Winter/Damnation is correct, though this does hurt our pitch blue cards, but at least in those matchups you're probably wanting to sideboard out Commandeer anyways. The bounce effects are nice with our mass shuffle-hand combos, and are also better vs graveyard decks because the cards go back into hand and not directly into the graveyard to be reanimated again, (re-reanimated if you will). Note: Blast Zone can also be sided in in place of border posts against decks with a lot of artifact hate so that your mana base isn't as fragile, or in place of the border posts if you want to keep in the Sanitariums for combo redundancy.
Combo & Control Sideboarding Spell Pierce, Force of Negation, Flusterstorm and Commandeer are mostly just to have extra answers for the noncreature deck matchups when we are wanting to sideboard out our creature hate cards, because these matchups are already fairly good it may be that the sideboard should be more oriented towards beating our bad matchups vs making our good matchups better, this is mainly a meta call.
Graveyard Sideboarding Relic of Progenitus, and Ashiok, Dream Render nowadays every deck needs some sideboard graveyard hate it seems. Fortunately we already have some in the maindeck in Day's Undoing, but a little more never hurts, also Relic is considerably faster than Day's. Ashiok's "cannot search library' passive is also good against a lot of decks that do a lot of tutoring, like Scapeshift so it does double duty in helping against two different types of matchups. Other graveyard hate options include Nihil Spellbomb and Surgical extraction.
Notion Thief an extra copy of our combo piece just in case the opponent keeps killing it, though we have, (in theory) so much relevant interaction maybe this should just be another hate card, or even be fit somewhere in the mainboard. It's also hard to decide when to stick this extra card in because it doesn't really help vs the decks that are better at dealing with our combo, whereas siding in things like Spell Pierce or Commandeer might seem like a better idea.
Chalice of the Void A lot of our 1 mana interaction spells aren't super important, so maybe Chalice could help slow our opponent down siding out some of our own 1 cmc cards, though not being blue is a big deal. Mostly it's just not really necessary so why play a "meh" non-blue card?
Surgical Extraction We already have a lot of free interaction, and relic is a better overall answer most likely. This could end up in the sideboard if the meta is incredibly graveyard-combo-centric, (though not being blue is a big annoying as always.)
Fatal Push A more permanent answer to resolved creatures that the deck struggles with, it doesn't help with bigger creatures and isn't blue, but maybe that's ok if it really helps our bad matchups that much. Being black and not blue gives me the big sad.
Damnation Same as Fatal Push but slower and hits multiple creatures at once and doesn't care about cmc. Not a blue card
Narset's Reversal A weird and even more narrow Remand, it's probably too weird to work, but it's flavorful and blue so maybe there is hope! Getting to stop your Day's Undoing from exiling is a cute, if somewhat unhelpful synergy.
Exhaustion Could help vs a lot of different decks, notably the creature matchup. We are already ok with cards that just delay the inevitable because once we get our combo online we should win fairly easily as long as the board is stabilized and we can cast a Day's Undoing. In some cases it's just a faster but overall worse Engulf the Shore, but in some cases also tapping lands/keeping the creatures tapped so they can't immediately tap again to activate abilities/attack, (looking at you Goblin Guide) is relevant. Definitely should be tested as an additional help card against aggro, though it cannot flatout replace the mass bounce "wrath" effect.
Gigadrowse Another mono blue control staple, it works very similarly to exhaustion, our deck is skimping on lands a little but also we have a lot of draw power and a little bit of ramp with the border posts so maybe these could work.
Augur of Bolas is a good early game blocker than digs to more interaction. Having 3 toughness vs the 1-2 of our other creatures is very relevant vs a lot of creature decks.
Spreading Seas having an answer to problematic lands somewhere in the 75 could be a good idea. Seas also cycles if it isn't useful, but can shutdown any of the lands we may run into, a least temporarily. Valakut is the most important example, as we have no other way to interact with it if it hits the battlefield.
Ghost QuarterSame as the above but in a land slot. We already have a little bit of room in the mana base that can be swapped around, maybe another viable option for land hate.
Dismember More noneblue creature soloutions. Kills different things than Fatal Push, and can cheat on the mana a little to cast it in a pinch. But it's not blue. Did I mention I don't like nonblue cards?
Unmoored Ego A blue spell that can help in a lot of matchups, most importantly giving us answers to lands like Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle without specifically having to play land hate. Very good against pretty much every combo deck, and can also be decent in the more fair matchups in dealing with problem cards, (for example taking out Spell Queller can be a big deal etc.)
Yahenni's Expertise Another option for mass creature hate. -3/-3 is enough to take care of a lot of creatures in the format, (notable exclusions include Death's Shadow, Tarmogoyf, Gurmag Angler, [Primeval Titan] and Hollow One). Getting to potentially cast one of our combo pieces sounds sweet, but the BB mana cost can be hard to achieve with the current mana base.
Leyline of Sanctity A card that we cannot cast, (at least without major changes to the mana base) it becomes a little better with the London mulligan. Helps a ton vs Burn which is a pretty bad matchup. It's also good vs any deck running targeted discard which is somewhat annoying for our deck to play into.
Misthollow Griffin I'm going to be honest, I really want this one to work somehow. Combos exceptionally with our pitch spells, because we can exile it to one of them and then cast it as a good beater later in the game. 4 cmc is semi relevant too so that's nice, as is being resilient to Path to Exile or any other exile based removal. (During some of my test games with it I managed to pitch it to Commandeer to steal a Jace, the Mind Sculptor, then later cast it from exile. Then I Vapor Snagged it into my hand and exiled it again to counter a second Jace. It was pretty funny.) Note: in matchups with lots of removal you can combo Misthollow Griffin with Relic of Progenitus to keep getting back your Griffin. This is particularly relevant vs decks like Jund or even Death's Shadow that have a lot of ways to kill our stuff, and also a lot of creatures for the Griffin to block.
Thanks for the results! What list were you playing?
4x Narset, Parter of Veils
3x Teferi, Time Raveler
Creatures-7
4x Lore Broker
3x Notion Thief
Instants-17
2x Commandeer
4x Disrupting Shoal
2x Remand
2x Snapback
3x Spell Pierce
2x Spell Snare
2x Unsubstantiate
3x Fieldmist Borderpost
1x Mistvein Borderpost
Sorceries-6
4x Day's Undoing
1x Supreme Verdict
1x Void Snare
Lands- 19
4x Flooded Strand
1x Geier Reach Sanitarium
2x Hallowed Fountain
6x Island
1x Plains
4x Polluted Delta
1x Watery Grave
2x Ashiok, Dream Render
2x Blast Zone
2x Commandeer
2x Path to Exile
2x Relic of Progenitus
3x Supreme Verdict
2x Unmoored Ego
So far Teferi, Time Raveler has felt good against both creature decks and combo/control decks. Ticking down to deal with permanents and get an extra draw is awesome, but my favorite part about him is getting to Wrath/Day's at instant speed. So far the mana hasn't been too much of a problem running 3 colors, I went up 1 more land to have room for a few more fetches while still keeping the basic count high. I also cut one Geier Reach for a plains which has been nice against field of ruin/path, though I do miss the extra combo piece. Verdict being blue, (and also being 4 cmc) has been great in place of damnation, and obviously it deals with creatures better than Engulf. Haven't tested Dovin's Veto yet, mostly because I'm not sure where I can fit it in.
Thanks for that; you're absolutely right it could be misleading the way I worded it.
Puzzle box only filters cards if you already had cards in hand when you cast it whereas Day's can be topdecked and still give you 7 cards no matter what. Enough people are saying it has tested well though so I may give it a shot.
I still think Teferi's puzzle box is bad, but I haven't tested it at all. Pros: it locks the opponent out completely with just 1 card in addition to Narset or Thief. Cons: it does basically nothing when you don't have Narset/Thief in play. Day's, Lore Broker and Geier Reach/Mikokoro all do at least a little something when you don't have a Narset/Thief, and they all help you draw into Thief where Puzzle box doesn't if you don't have much in hand, being 4 mana and sorcery speed also sucks.
That being said, if it is tested and is found to be a viable replacement to Day's/Thief it could save us some slots, (from 11 down to 4+ however many of the old combo pieces we may want to keep for consistency), and cutting cards out of the combo slots will help our interaction suite a ton; so even if it's a slightly worse card when we aren't comboing it, maybe that's ok because the rest of the deck is more efficient anyways with the saved slots.
On the topic of trying different colors: I am currently attempting to brew an esper list myself, (though not for playing Spirit of the Labyrinth). I'm interested in getting to play Supreme Verdict, Dovin's Veto, Path to Exile and my personal favorite, Teferi, Time Raveler. Other than path, they are all still blue cards so they don't interfere with our pitch plan, (a huge plus for Verdict over Damnation, where Engulf just doesn't feel like enough a lot of the time), and Teferi, Time Raveler is a) another answer to both creatures, which the deck struggles with, and b) can also hit resolved artifacts and enchantments which helps a ton because we don't have a lot that can interact with those if they hit the board, being able to hit Aethervial is great, and also making Void Snare instant speed is sweet. Being able to play Day's at instant speed is great too. Teferi's passive also hurts some opponent's naturally and also makes our lock with Thief instant-proof. The awkward part is the mana base. We need lots of blue sources and still have to splash black for Thief, so playing lots of basics is harder when we need 3 colors, (notably WW to cast verdict), but not playing as many basics hurts our borderposts a ton. So do we cut border posts or just play a few basics and then a ton of fetches to make sure we can always find a basic if we need to play a post. Let me know what you guys think here.
I don't like the line of play after 1:15 where OP plays the 2nd remand targeting Narset. By Commandeering targeting 1 remand and then aiming that remand at spell snare, and then tapping out to recast spell snare, yet you get both remands out of the OP's hand and also get your Narset in play, but you just tapped out, with no free interaction in hand to protect Narset, and you know the OP has a mystical teachings in hand from when you remanded it earlier, meaning there is no way your Narset survives unless you find a pitch spell off of the -2. If you don't Commandeer at least you get to keep your Narset & spell snare in hand while also holding up both Commandeer & spell snare for the OP's turn. If you do Commandeer a remand, aim it at the other remand so that you resolve the Narset and hold one mana up, meaning you have another hit with the -2 to potentially have some interaction to keep her alive, (obviously OP went for ubrubt decay instead of trophy, however, meaning that the first option of not Commandeering is best).
Also revealing that you have a Notion Thief by casting it when Teachings is on the stack seems questionable. There's no way the OP doesn't search for something to kill your Thief. Wait for them to hopefully get greedy, or pick the wrong bit of interaction with Teachings and then try and play it after they already chose what card they want. Basically, I think you could have baited the opponent into doing what they did at 3:20ish a lot earlier, (tapping out on their turn so that you can Thief into Day's which probably wins you the game.)
In addition to pitching bad cards, we can always loot them away; the deck doesn't care about having situational cards because if you have other uses for said cards you don't care when they are bad nearly as much.
It's an interesting interaction. The rules text for Narset, Parter of Veils from Gatherer states:
This means that if you activate a looting ability during the opponent's upkeep, (meaning they haven't drawn a card yet this turn), Narset allows the draw to happen, and then Thief's ability cancels the draw and gives you a card. When the opponent's draw phase comes, Narset's ability doesn't prevent the draw, because the opponent hasn't actually drawn a card yet and Thief doesn't care about the draw step draw, so the opponent ends up getting that card.
If you activate the looting ability after the opponent has drawn their card in the draw step, Narset's ability kicks in and stops them from drawing another card, so they discard the one they just drew, (assuming 0 cards in hand at the begging of the turn), and because they never drew a card that wasn't the initial draw step one, Notion Thief's ability never triggers.
Let's say you cast a Day's Undoing with both out during your turn, and the opponent hasn't drawn any cards this turn. The first card the opponent attempts to draw is allowed by Narset, but then gets cancelled by Thief, so you get an extra. The 2nd card isn't canceled by Narset, because the opponent never drew the first card, so Thief kicks in, cancels that draw also, and then gives you another. This means that by the end of casting the Day's Undoing, your opponent will have 0 cards and you will have 14, (7 from your draws from Days, and 7 from the Thief's ability.) Also let it be noted: if something is preventing the opponent's draw in their draw step from happening, (ex. Colfenor's Plans) then each time they would go to draw a card Thief's ability would cancel it, so Narset never triggers, and you end up with the extra cards.
To recap: If you want to draw an extra card and you have both Notion Thief and Narset, Parter of Veils out, trigger the loot before the first draw of the turn; if you want to lock the opponent out of keeping cards in their hand activate the loot after the initial draw of the draw step.
A few key differences between the two passive effects on Narset, Parter of Veils/Notion Thief, however:
1) Notion Thief's ability stops every draw other than the opponent's normal draw during their draw step, this means that if you make the opponent loot on your turn, or draw on your turn, they don't draw any cards, whereas Narset, Parter of Veils sets a cap for 1 card each turn, so if you loot on your turn the opponent draws a card as normal.
2) In order to lock the opponent out of drawing cards with lore broker and Notion Thief's ability, you must activate the looting effect in response to them drawing a card on their draw step, so they immediately loot, not drawing the card for the loot, and discarding the card they just drew, with you also drawing an extra card due to Notion Thief's ability. This has the drawback of the opponent being able to cast instants in response to the loot trigger, unlike Narset, Parter of Veils where you can make them loot during their upkeep, so they draw 1 and discard 1, and then they don't get the draw for the draw step, meaning if they had 0 cards in hand when you activated the looting ability there's no time for them to cast the card that they draw before they have to discard it, (obviously madness cards get around this).
That's a typo: was supposed to say 4 and being BB. Damnation is already hard to cast, a more narrow damnation doesn't feel good enough.
1. Teferi's Puzzle Box is just a slower, worse, Day's Undoing; not really what the deck wants.
2. The blue pitch spells are absolutely worth playing, they are the reason why we get essentially free wins vs control decks and most other combo decks, and are essential to getting our combo online fast enough while holding up protection for it on the same turn. We don't really need any black spells in most of our matchups, the only really good on that comes to mind is damnation which is still questionable.
3. It's really not hard to close out games. Vendilion Clique and Notion Thief both beat in for 3 and our opponent has to get through both our draw lock and our handful of counter/bounce spells to stop them. Not really an issue. Creeping Tar Pit is slow and Mistvein Borderpost is often the best card in the deck when we can pitch it to fuel our other spells.
It seems like you're just goldfishing with your suggestions and haven't actually played much with the deck. It functions surprising well with the current list, we don't need to be changing our entire gameplan by dropping the pitch spells or swapping out combo pieces I don't think. That being said feel free to try out your suggestions and come back to us with the results. If they end up panning out then more power to you.
While this is partly true, one of the reasons that the blue pitch spells are so powerful is that it lets us tap out to play our sorcery-speed combo pieces while still holding up interaction; but against aggro decks that may not have a lot of interaction I think it's fine to sideboard in some none-blue hate cards, while siding out useless interaction spells in those matchups like -2 Commandeer +2 Yahenni's Expertise is probably fine, and the ability to combo into a Day's Undoing, Ashiok, Dream Render or Narset, Parter of Veils is pretty sweet. Only dealing with 3 toughness or less creatures kind of sucks, it does nothing vs green stompy, Primeval Titan, Tarmogoyf, Death's Shadow, and Gurmag Angler etc, so I'm not sure it's worth it in place of something like Damnation. Also 4 cmc is a little high for the deck, especially with it also needing double black on top of that.
edit: Consign // Oblivion is a 7 cmc card, yes, and Commit // Memory is 10.
A UR version is something I've been wanting to try, obviously it makes the pitch blue cards slightly worse, but the upside for having better & faster discard may be worth it. Can't wait to see what you come up with!
Yeah all of this was more matchup specific stuff that I said I would go into more once the deck has a little more testing done. Good points all around, especially with dredge being able to kind of get around the combo. As far as the border posts go, yes they are incredibly bad vs lots of Tron's payoffs, the plan is to never let those payoffs hit the batttlefield, (Commandeer can take most of them, and Ashiok Dream Render can slow them down a fair bit. I have played a few times against Tron and it feels like a decent matchup, though it may be worthwhile to side in blast zones and side out a few Mistvein Borderposts or something; but I am very hesitant to cut them from the mainboard entirely because I think their upside far outweighs the downside in a few specific matchups. Ensnaring Bridge is an interesting one, because we don't have an alternate win con aside from combat damage currently, however we have a good number of cards that can stop it from hitting the battlefield, destroy it with Blast Zone, (a little awkward because of the cmc hitting a lot of our stuff too) or bouncing it. This is definitely a card to look out for and see how beatable it is with the current list, but I think until then the list should be more oriented towards keeping the good matchups good and improving the bad matchups.
Welcome to the Pitch Blue / Narset Combo Primer!
The deck is looking to abuse symmetrical card draw effects and the passive ability of Narset, Parter of Veils to break the symmetry of said effects in our favor. Cards like Day's Undoing become 1 sided 3 mana draw 7, while our opponent has to shuffle their hand into their library, which is obviously incredibly powerful.
Another powerful option for abusing Narset draw only 1 clause is looting effects: activate Lore Broker during the opponent's turn during their upkeep, (i.e. before their draw step), both of you loot, and then when the opponent's draw step comes they don't get to draw because they already drew 1 during the loot. This means that we can lock our opponent out of ever drawing cards, and doing it during their upkeep means that they cannot cast the card at instant speed, (because the draw and discard effect from the loot happens at the same time they never have a chance to react to having a card in their hand). Geier Reach Sanitarium is an additional looting effect on a land, and mikokoro, center of the sea is a one sided howling mine.
We are only allowed to play 4 copies of Narset, Parter of Veils, fortunately, Notion Thief is a creature with a very similar effect that we can also abuse with our symmetrical draw/looting effects, I will go more into depth the difference between the two in the "Guide to Playing the Deck" section.
Aside from our symmetrical draw/looting effects to combo with Narset or Notion Thief, we are also playing a ton of interaction to both slow our opponent down till we get the combo online, and also to keep our combo pieces safe. These interaction cards are fairly interesting, however, because of all of the extra cards we have in hand from Day's Undoing we get to play cards like Disrupting Shoal because the card disadvantage of exiling cards from our hand isn't as big when you have 1 sided draw 7s etc.
4 Narset, Parter of Veils
Creatures- 10
4 Lore Broker
3 Notion Thief
3 Vendilion Clique
Instants-20
3 Spell Pierce
2x Spell Snare
1x Vapor Snag
4x Disrupting Shoal
2x Remand
2x Snapback
2x Unsubstantiate
2x Commandeer
1x Commit // Memory
1x Engulf The Shore
4 Mistvein Borderpost
Sorceries-4
4 Day's Undoing
Lands- 18
2 Geier Reach Sanitarium
9 Island
4 Polluted Delta
1 Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
2 Watery Grave
1 Spell Snare
1 Engulf the Shore
2 Commandeer
1 Damnation
2 Unmoored Ego
2 Ashiok, Dream Render
1 Tyrant's Scorn
2 Relic of Progenitus
2 Blast Zone
The deck relies on having Disrupting Shoal to slow our opponent down and keep our combo pieces alive, so having a good spread of converted mana costs in our spells, especially in game 1, is very important. Because of this, it is worthwhile playing spells that may not be as good on their own vs another option in order to keep our cmc spread out enough. If we go up against something like Death's Shadow, we want to have Vapor Snags, Spell Snares and Spell Pierces to pitch in order to counter all of their 1 cmc stuff; even if it seems like there's better options to replace those cards; the cmc is also a key factor.
Narset, Parter of Veils
Notion Thief
1) Notion Thief's ability stops every draw other than the opponent's normal draw during their draw step, this means that if you make the opponent loot on your turn, or draw on your turn, they don't draw any cards, whereas Narset, Parter of Veils sets a cap for 1 card each turn, so if you loot on your turn the opponent draws a card as normal.
2) In order to lock the opponent out of drawing cards with lore broker and Notion Thief's ability, you must activate the looting effect during their draw step, (i.e. right after they draw their draw step card) so they immediately loot, not drawing the card for the loot, and discarding the card they just drew, with you also drawing an extra card due to Notion Thief's ability. This has the drawback of the opponent being able to cast instants in response to the loot trigger, unlike Narset, Parter of Veils where you can make them loot during their upkeep, so they draw 1 and discard 1, and then they don't get the draw for the draw step, meaning if they had 0 cards in hand when you activated the looting ability there's no time for them to cast the card that they draw before they have to discard it, (obviously madness cards get around this).
Lore Broker
Teferi's Puzzle Box
Jace's Archivist
Day's Undoing
Geier Reach Sanitarium
Mikokoro, Center of the Sea
(Fair interaction are cards that interact with our opponents that don't have alternate casting costs, meaning we have to use mana to cast them; spells with alternate casting costs will be referred to as "pitch spells".)
Spell Pierce
Spell Snare
Vapor Snag
Void Snare
Flusterstorm
Remand
Unsubstantiate
Commit // Memory
Vendilion Clique
Tyrant's Scorn
Thing in the Ice :rate4.5:]A blocker to save both us and Narset some damage, TITI also functions as a board wipe and a win con! If put in the deck you probably want to run some amount of cheap cantrips, (swapping out some amount of our 1 mana interaction spells for Serum Visions/Opt usually does the trick). TITI is one of the best answers to fast creature decks in blue, fortunately there's not very many creatures with the horror type that are played in modern, so the bounce effect is almost always "bounce all other creatures", a big step up from other blue board wipe effects. Can also be comboed with Day's Undoing, if the Day's is the 4th instant/sorcery spell cast after playing TITI, the TITI bounce trigger will go on the stack before the Day's Undoing resolves. Meaning the creatures will get bounced and then suffled into the opponent's library as soon as the Day's resolves. Pretty nice trick that costs a lot less mana to do than trying to combo Day's Undoing with Engulf the Shore, Aetherize etc.
Dead of Winter [rate=4.0]] Not a blue card, but it is one of the better wrath options available to us. Replacing our islands with Snow-Covered Island is easy, and we already play a good amount of basics to make the Borderposts work. It's a turn faster than both Engulf the Shore and Damnation, while also hitting the same amount of creatures as Engulf and being easier to cast than Damnation, (one black versus 2 black in the casting cost is a big deal for us, especially in the early game where we really need a board wipe to stabilize). Killing things is also, (usually) better than bouncing them to hand.
Disrupting Shoal
Commandeer is a bit of an interesting card with some complicated rules interactions, we'll start with the simple ones and work our way up.
Force of Negation
Mistvein Borderpost
They key win condition of the deck is to lock the opponent out of ever drawing cards with a combination of Narset, Parter of Veils/Notion Thief and a looting effect like Lore Broker by making the opponent draw a card and immediately discard it.
A few key differences between the two passive effects on Narset, Parter of Veils/Notion Thief, however:
1) Notion Thief's ability stops every draw other than the opponent's normal draw during their draw step, this means that if you make the opponent loot on your turn, or draw on your turn, they don't draw any cards, whereas Narset, Parter of Veils sets a cap for 1 card each turn, so if you loot on your turn the opponent draws a card as normal.
2) In order to lock the opponent out of drawing cards with lore broker and Notion Thief's ability, you must activate the looting effect in response to them drawing a card on their draw step, so they immediately loot, not drawing the card for the loot, and discarding the card they just drew, with you also drawing an extra card due to Notion Thief's ability. This has the drawback of the opponent being able to cast instants in response to the loot trigger, unlike Narset, Parter of Veils where you can make them loot during their upkeep, so they draw 1 and discard 1, and then they don't get the draw for the draw step, meaning if they had 0 cards in hand when you activated the looting ability there's no time for them to cast the card that they draw before they have to discard it, (obviously madness cards get around this).
It's an interesting interaction. The rules text for Narset, Parter of Veils from Gatherer states:
This means that if you activate a looting ability during the opponent's upkeep, (meaning they haven't drawn a card yet this turn), Narset allows the draw to happen, and then Thief's ability cancels the draw and gives you a card. When the opponent's draw phase comes, Narset's ability doesn't prevent the draw, because the opponent hasn't actually drawn a card yet and Thief doesn't care about the draw step draw, so the opponent ends up getting that card.
If you activate the looting ability after the opponent has drawn their card in the draw step, Narset's ability kicks in and stops them from drawing another card, so they discard the one they just drew, (assuming 0 cards in hand at the begging of the turn), and because they never drew a card that wasn't the initial draw step one, Notion Thief's ability never triggers.
Let's say you cast a Day's Undoing with both out during your turn, and the opponent hasn't drawn any cards this turn. The first card the opponent attempts to draw is allowed by Narset, but then gets cancelled by Thief, so you get an extra. The 2nd card isn't canceled by Narset, because the opponent never drew the first card, so Thief kicks in, cancels that draw also, and then gives you another. This means that by the end of casting the Day's Undoing, your opponent will have 0 cards and you will have 14, (7 from your draws from Days, and 7 from the Thief's ability.) Also let it be noted: if something is preventing the opponent's draw in their draw step from happening, (ex. Colfenor's Plans) then each time they would go to draw a card Thief's ability would cancel it, so Narset never triggers, and you end up with the extra cards.
To recap: If you want to draw an extra card and you have both Notion Thief and Narset, Parter of Veils out, trigger the loot before the first draw of the turn; if you want to lock the opponent out of keeping cards in their hand activate the loot after the initial draw of the draw step.
In order to get the combo online, you need to do 2 things: 1) resolve your pieces and protect them and 2) get your opponent empty handed.
Resolving the combo pieces and protecting them is actually easier in this deck than in other combo decks, because of all of our free interaction spells: we don't have to wait until we can hold up mana for interaction during/after casting our combo pieces if we have a Disrupting Shoal in hand to hopefully protect it until we can untap next turn. Because our draw spells like Day's Undoing become a lot worse if we don't have a combo piece out, it is very important to get either Narset, Parter of Veils/Notion Thief on the board and keep it there as earlier as possible and as long as possible, (though obviously make sure it is safe to cast them; it sucks when you have a Remand in hand that could've countered that Ugin The Spirit Dragon but instead you tapped out hoping that Disrupting Shoal on 2 would be enough).
Getting our opponent empty handed can be done one of two ways: either they cast everything in their hand and you survive it and manage to stabilize despite this, or you cast Day's Undoing with Narset or Thief out to make them shuffle their hand away without drawing new cards, it is also possible to activate multiple looting effects, (Lore Broker etc.) during 1 turn to make the opponent start discarding extra cards.
Once the opponent is locked out of drawing cards we can close out the game by beating in with our utility creatures.
Anything that likes to cast a lot of noncreature spells is a pretty good matchup, especially decks that have a lot of card draw effects, like Control, or Storm simply because our combo pieces are already naturally good against them, and our free pitch spells let us interact with their combo in unexpected times. We also have a pretty good matchup vs things like the new Neoform decks or the Goryo's Vengeance decks that are looking to abuse the new London mulligan rule, again because our free pitch spells let us interact with them when they go for that early turn 1 or 2 kill, far earlier than most decks in the format, and also fairly consistently especially in games 2 & 3 when we can bring in additional Commandeers.
Decks like Burn, Elves and Humans are much harder to beat but not impossible; cheap and efficient creatures dodge a lot of interaction and Cavern of Souls and Aether Vial can make them even harder to interact with. Burn especially is also pretty good at killing our combo pieces, (if you can help it never tick down Narset, Parter of Veils because it puts her in bolt etc. range).
There are also some interesting matchups, where our deck functions really well vs part of their deck, but does very little vs other parts. Scapeshift/Valakut, The Molten Pinnacle/Primeval Titan decks. Scapeshift is pretty easily shut down with the likes of Commandeer, but Valakut, The Molten Pinnacle dodges all of our interaction, while Primeval Titan dodges some of it but not all. Dredge is another one of the matchups: our combo pieces are pretty sweet against their Faithless Lootings and Burning Inquirys, but their ability to dump creatures on the battlefield very quickly can lead to problems, and also sometimes our looting effects will just give them a discard outlet to discard whatever they wanted in their graveyard in the first place.
Creature/Aggro Sideboarding
Blast Zone, Snapback, Dead of Winter, Tyrant's Scorn, Damnation and Engulf the Shore are all in there to help with creature matchups. Blast zone should replace Mikokoro, Center of the Sea/Geier Reach Sanitarium to not mess up the land color/count ratios. Snapback, Tyrant's Scorn and Engulf the Shore are the best answers to creatures in mono blue for the deck. It is possible that swapping these out for a few Fatal Push and Dead of Winter/Damnation is correct, though this does hurt our pitch blue cards, but at least in those matchups you're probably wanting to sideboard out Commandeer anyways. The bounce effects are nice with our mass shuffle-hand combos, and are also better vs graveyard decks because the cards go back into hand and not directly into the graveyard to be reanimated again, (re-reanimated if you will). Note: Blast Zone can also be sided in in place of border posts against decks with a lot of artifact hate so that your mana base isn't as fragile, or in place of the border posts if you want to keep in the Sanitariums for combo redundancy.
Combo & Control Sideboarding
Spell Pierce, Force of Negation, Flusterstorm and Commandeer are mostly just to have extra answers for the noncreature deck matchups when we are wanting to sideboard out our creature hate cards, because these matchups are already fairly good it may be that the sideboard should be more oriented towards beating our bad matchups vs making our good matchups better, this is mainly a meta call.
Graveyard Sideboarding
Relic of Progenitus, and Ashiok, Dream Render nowadays every deck needs some sideboard graveyard hate it seems. Fortunately we already have some in the maindeck in Day's Undoing, but a little more never hurts, also Relic is considerably faster than Day's. Ashiok's "cannot search library' passive is also good against a lot of decks that do a lot of tutoring, like Scapeshift so it does double duty in helping against two different types of matchups. Other graveyard hate options include Nihil Spellbomb and Surgical extraction.
Notion Thief an extra copy of our combo piece just in case the opponent keeps killing it, though we have, (in theory) so much relevant interaction maybe this should just be another hate card, or even be fit somewhere in the mainboard. It's also hard to decide when to stick this extra card in because it doesn't really help vs the decks that are better at dealing with our combo, whereas siding in things like Spell Pierce or Commandeer might seem like a better idea.
Chalice of the Void A lot of our 1 mana interaction spells aren't super important, so maybe Chalice could help slow our opponent down siding out some of our own 1 cmc cards, though not being blue is a big deal. Mostly it's just not really necessary so why play a "meh" non-blue card?
Surgical Extraction We already have a lot of free interaction, and relic is a better overall answer most likely. This could end up in the sideboard if the meta is incredibly graveyard-combo-centric, (though not being blue is a big annoying as always.)
Fatal Push A more permanent answer to resolved creatures that the deck struggles with, it doesn't help with bigger creatures and isn't blue, but maybe that's ok if it really helps our bad matchups that much. Being black and not blue gives me the big sad.
Damnation Same as Fatal Push but slower and hits multiple creatures at once and doesn't care about cmc. Not a blue card
Narset's Reversal A weird and even more narrow Remand, it's probably too weird to work, but it's flavorful and blue so maybe there is hope! Getting to stop your Day's Undoing from exiling is a cute, if somewhat unhelpful synergy.
Exhaustion Could help vs a lot of different decks, notably the creature matchup. We are already ok with cards that just delay the inevitable because once we get our combo online we should win fairly easily as long as the board is stabilized and we can cast a Day's Undoing. In some cases it's just a faster but overall worse Engulf the Shore, but in some cases also tapping lands/keeping the creatures tapped so they can't immediately tap again to activate abilities/attack, (looking at you Goblin Guide) is relevant. Definitely should be tested as an additional help card against aggro, though it cannot flatout replace the mass bounce "wrath" effect.
Gigadrowse Another mono blue control staple, it works very similarly to exhaustion, our deck is skimping on lands a little but also we have a lot of draw power and a little bit of ramp with the border posts so maybe these could work.
Augur of Bolas is a good early game blocker than digs to more interaction. Having 3 toughness vs the 1-2 of our other creatures is very relevant vs a lot of creature decks.
Spreading Seas having an answer to problematic lands somewhere in the 75 could be a good idea. Seas also cycles if it isn't useful, but can shutdown any of the lands we may run into, a least temporarily. Valakut is the most important example, as we have no other way to interact with it if it hits the battlefield.
Ghost QuarterSame as the above but in a land slot. We already have a little bit of room in the mana base that can be swapped around, maybe another viable option for land hate.
Dismember More noneblue creature soloutions. Kills different things than Fatal Push, and can cheat on the mana a little to cast it in a pinch. But it's not blue. Did I mention I don't like nonblue cards?
Unmoored Ego A blue spell that can help in a lot of matchups, most importantly giving us answers to lands like Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle without specifically having to play land hate. Very good against pretty much every combo deck, and can also be decent in the more fair matchups in dealing with problem cards, (for example taking out Spell Queller can be a big deal etc.)
Yahenni's Expertise Another option for mass creature hate. -3/-3 is enough to take care of a lot of creatures in the format, (notable exclusions include Death's Shadow, Tarmogoyf, Gurmag Angler, [Primeval Titan] and Hollow One). Getting to potentially cast one of our combo pieces sounds sweet, but the BB mana cost can be hard to achieve with the current mana base.
Leyline of Sanctity A card that we cannot cast, (at least without major changes to the mana base) it becomes a little better with the London mulligan. Helps a ton vs Burn which is a pretty bad matchup. It's also good vs any deck running targeted discard which is somewhat annoying for our deck to play into.
Misthollow Griffin I'm going to be honest, I really want this one to work somehow. Combos exceptionally with our pitch spells, because we can exile it to one of them and then cast it as a good beater later in the game. 4 cmc is semi relevant too so that's nice, as is being resilient to Path to Exile or any other exile based removal. (During some of my test games with it I managed to pitch it to Commandeer to steal a Jace, the Mind Sculptor, then later cast it from exile. Then I Vapor Snagged it into my hand and exiled it again to counter a second Jace. It was pretty funny.) Note: in matchups with lots of removal you can combo Misthollow Griffin with Relic of Progenitus to keep getting back your Griffin. This is particularly relevant vs decks like Jund or even Death's Shadow that have a lot of ways to kill our stuff, and also a lot of creatures for the Griffin to block.