I'm currently running 25 lands and 4 manlands (2 ragine ravine 2 treetop) and am planning for some of the grindier matchups like control and midrange mirrors to board out a land. Question is, which land should I be cutting? I had a couple friends told me to board out a fetch but wondering if people had other suggestions.
I would not suggest to do that. In attrition based matchups you actually want to grind and hit landdrops. Plus, with FoR being popular, you cant do that.
Its actually the opposite: Against fast aggro and combo matches where you can cut a land. And in that case, I would cut the fourth basic primarily.
Hmm maybe I'm looking at it differently, cause couldn't you make the argument of taking out a land to reduce the chance of drawing a land when you're in a topdeck war? Hm I also never considered taking out a land for aggro and combo matches.
I'm currently running 25 lands and 4 manlands (2 ragine ravine 2 treetop) and am planning for some of the grindier matchups like control and midrange mirrors to board out a land. Question is, which land should I be cutting? I had a couple friends told me to board out a fetch but wondering if people had other suggestions.
Been playing this list to some success this past week. In the past week in two events I played against Jund, Titanshift, Esper Midrange x2, Dredge, Burn, Mono-U Tron, and Mono-U Merfolk and won against everybody except Mono-U Merfolk:
3 kcommands and 2 LtLH in the 75 have helped a lot in the midrange matchups. Last Thursday there were 5 Jund and 2 esper midrange players. Today I won a game 3 where my opponent was on 3 life. KCommand to deal 2 damage and return BBE. BBE cascaded into another KCommand
There are so many Jaces running around in my local meta, with people on Jeskai, Esper, Grixis, and Miracles, so the 2 Maelstrom pulses and dreadbores are nice for that, as well as the 4 creature lands.
Speaking of creature lands, treetop Village really has done well for me, and I like the 2/2 split between ravine and treetop.
I think for my sideboard I want to go down to 1 ancient grudge, I have the 3 K-commands and I have yet to play against or even see lantern or affinity in my local meta since the unbannings. I'm trying to figure out what to replace the Ancient Grudge with. My initial ideas are either the 2nd fatal push or Anger. Anger would help against some of the small creature matchups that still show up like Elves and Merfolk, but push could help with those matchups as well as the mirror. If anyone has other ideas on what could possibly take that SB slot I'd be interested in hearing it.
Can't really tell if that build is the right one yet. I feel some tweaks can surely be done. I do feel though that BBE, and LtLH, especially in combination is absolutely nuts. 4 BBE is fixed for me. I will continue playing with 25 lands and see if the flooding remains or not.
What changes do you have in mind so far? Also looking at what you played it seems like theres a lot of control and decks trying to get under, was it that way for the entire store?
I'd like to get some people's advice on tuning my Jund list for my local meta, apologies for what's probably gonna be a pretty long post. I went to modern last night and finished 2-2. Lost round 1 against mono-U taking turns in 3 games. Game 3 I got him down to 2 life but he was able to combo off and win, oh well. Round 2 I lost pretty badly to an Esper tempo deck running Geist and Shizo, Death's Storehouse and Lingering Souls. Round 3 I won against burn on the back of scavenging ooze, and round 4 I won against elves (grim lavamancer is so good against that deck). I was running Reid Duke's CFB list as a starting point. Here is the decklist for reference.
I made a single change to add 1 more Nihil Spellbomb to the sideboard and took out the 3rd Ancient Grudge, the main deck was the same.
Anywho, after the quick burn round I looked around the room and noted what everyone was playing. Here is the list that I compiled. Most of these people are regulars so I expect to see most of these decks on the same weekly basis: Mono-U Turns, U/B Turns, U/R Delver w/ Jace, 3x Grixis Control, Naya (BBE, Resto, Knight of the Reliquary), 2x Mono-G Tron, Storm, Living End, 2x Esper Control, 2x Jund, Lantern, 2x Burn, U/B Control, B/G Midrange (Rock), Counters Company, Sultai Midrange, 2x Eldrazi Tron.
With those decks in mind, I wanted to take Reid Duke's list and make some minor tweaks. Here were the tweaks that I was thinking; I'd be happy to hear your guys' opinions:
For the creature base, it seems like having 3 Scavenging Oozes is worth it, as it acts as GY hate against snapcaster and living end, lifegain against burn and small creature decks. On the other hand, it doesn't match well against the Turns decks, Tron, and Eldrazi Tron, and against the control decks it almost never lives more than 1 turn (either getting Push'd or Bolted), so at times it feels like a 3-drop before it just ends up dying. It could be I don't know how to use scavenging ooze very well; it seems like most of time it eats up a removal spell at times that would've been used on a goyf or bob.
I felt that the games where I had more discard I was in better shape, which makes me want more discard in the main than the 4 IoK. I'm thinking from the list to cut 1 LtLH, keep 2 KCommands in, put 1 terminate in the side to make room for I'm thinking a collective brutality and a thoughtseize. I also thought about having 3 KCommands but I didn't want my curve to be too high.
I personally liked 25 lands and will probably want to keep with that. I think I want to replace one of the Bloodstained Mires with a Wooded Foothills, as there were times where I kept seeing Bloodstained Mires and really wanted to get a Forest to preserve life total. I'm going to keep with 2 swamp, 1 forest, 1 mountain for my basic lands, as I didn't see a single Blood Moon in my local meta and I know the Grixis Control decks run Field of Ruin.
With the amount of control, I wanted to fit a Thrun in the sideboard. Since I put in a thoughtseize in the main, that frees up a space to put a Thrun.
With these changes, here is the list I'm thinking of now.
Not sure if these decisions seem right based on my local meta, so I'd like to get as much input as possible, or if there are tweaks that I haven't mentioned that you think may be good. Thanks for the help!
Just ended up 9th place out of 133 people in the Saturday Modern Challenge on MTGO today. 6-2 overall. Threw away at least one game on a pretty loose mulligan decision, so falling just a bit short is kind of sad, but it is what it is.
My wins were against a guy who got disconnected and timed out, an As Foretold/Taking Turns deck that made top 8, some kind of 5c Saheeli/Felidar/value cards deck (playing Jace and BBE!), Bogles, Jund mirror, Burn
My losses were against Grixis Shadow and 5c Humans. Both of those are good matchups but it happens. The Humans loss in particular stings because that loss was clearly my fault, made some punts.
I think Fatal Push is too efficient against the aggressive decks to cut, but otherwise I want my removal to be pretty universal. I have no idea about Terminate over other options, but I wanted another instant speed card against big creatures. The one Terminate is definitely the worst card.
Grim Lavamancer and Treetop Village are awesome. IoK is amazing against nearly every deck and playing less than 4 is crazy. Raging Ravine is not nearly as good as it used to be. Jace is not very good against this deck, we have so many ways to pressure it. I'm pretty sure Dreadbore is wrong.
25 land was good, don't really want to cut one. There's no other 60th card I want badly in the maindeck.
Did you ever think that you missed the 1 abrupt decay? The main deck that I want to run is similar to yours except I have -1 TS +1 abrupt decay in the main. I also initially had 1 pulse main and 1 pulse side but I'm interested in the idea of having two pulse mainboard since I feel like I'm gonna side it in often. Do you think it's too clunky though?
Yeah I'm not sure about a lot of my choices but I want to try them out. 25 lands feels like the safer route, and I do like the addition of the Mountain, especially because even 3-color control decks like grixis and jeskai are trying to run FoR. My 2 cents and logic on why I chose 3 KCommand over 2 Kcommand 1 LtLH main is that the real benefit that LtLH has over KCommand is being able to pick off x/1s and recur multiple times, if she were to survive. KCommand has the ability to reach Jace and can take your opponent down a card. I'm expecting a lot of people in my local meta to run Jace (i have a couple grixis control and u/w control friends) and so this 1 extra KCommand is hedging for that.
I'm also concerned about the number of discard in the main. When I was playing against my friend on Grixis Control with Jace I felt that I did better with the hands that had more discard than less. When I sided into duress and more brutalities and saw them I was in a lot better shape.
Nevertheless that's the 75 that I wanna try once they're legal on paper. I have a modern event that I can go to on Tuesday and Thursday so will probably attend both and give the list a shot.
One other thought that I had, do we still want 2 ancient grudges in the side? I don't seem to be siding them in a lot based on sideboard plans, plus now I have 3 KCommands in the main. It also seems like with the increased number of KCommands from both us and Grixis control that Lantern and Affinity will see less play?
So after coming up with the 75 that I'm interested in trying week 1, I tried to come up with sideboard plans for certain matchups, and would like some input on some matchups. Here's the 75 that I'll be working with.
The matchups that I'm having trouble figuring out SB plans are for titanshift, grixis control, jeskai control, and u/w control.
For titanshift, cards that could come in are the 4 fulminators, duress, brutalities, pulse, and kitchen finks. Cards that can definitely come out are 1 push and abrupt decay, but I'm not sure where to go after that. Should I start cutting into the kcommands or something else? It seems now with BBE that kcommands are valued more so I guess in general I'm unsure as to when kcommands should go out.
As for the control matchups, there's a lot that I can potentially bring in. The cards that I could bring in for all 3 are the 4 fulminators, kitchen finks, LtLH, brutalities, pulse for JTMS, and duress. The nihil spellbombs can be for jeskai control and especially grixis control with the snap/kcommand looping. probably don't need to bring the spellbombs in against u/w control. Cards I know I can take out are 1 push, 1 abrupt decay, and 2 terminate. I was also thinking of taking out a bloodstained mire since that'll still put me at 24 lands, which doesn't seem bad against control. I'm not sure where to go from there. Some of the options are to shave on IoK and bolts, but is it worth taking out say all 4 bolts and 2 IoK to bring in all the stuff from the sideboard?
My initial thoughts on the change to our beloved Jund deck:
Since JTMS is unbanned, subsequently delve creatures, and big fatty creatures become worse, and small go-wide creatures become better against Jace. This automatically means Bolt becomes way better now (against Jace and the small creatures) which also works well with BBE. So 4 Bolts no questions asked in the beginning.
We need to think about our curve a little bit. Jamming 4 BBE is certainly the starting point, 100 %, although I think the sweetspot might be 3 copies. I would also try to go for 5 Lili PWs if possible OR 2 KCommand. I think running both is a bit hard IF we run 4 BBE. With 3 it might work.
Thoughtseize is certainly better now than IOK. If Jace warps the format, then I would start with a 4 TS and 2 IOK split.
I am very unsure about the number of Decays and Terminates to run in the deck. Also I am thinking of running a Dreadbore for Jace.
1 Maelstrom Pulse should still be somewhere in the 75 always I think. I also think 1 MD is a must, simply because of Jace.
I think Big Mana will try to prey on all the midrange/control decks arising, so we need to be aware of that.
I still think Bob is better than Grim Flayer but I think if we upper the curve that much and run more TS, Burn is also making a huge uptick in popularity. Time will tell how big that impact is.
NO LESS THAN 24 LANDS. Honestly people, let that damn 23 land garbage go already. I was always against it, and if not for now, there is absolutely no reason to prolong that nonsense.
I dont think we want to reach back to other older cards like Blightning or the like.
Hazoret might still be great to run. It can singlehandedly take out a Jace which was played and upticked right away.
Kitchen Finks back in the equation? I personally dont think so, but its a neat consideration.
Agree with everything here. I'll probably start with 4 BBE but if I cut down to 3 I can fit in 5 lilis and 2 KCommands, which sounds great. For now going to try 4 BBE, 4 Lilis, and 2 KCommands.
@DeFish my main deck is pretty much card for card with yours, except I was thinking -1 Decay +1 Pulse. It's an extra answer against JTMS and helps out against mardu which is showing up a lot. My worry is making the curve of the deck higher, thoughts?
Benjamin Nikolich, the winner of the last SCG modern open playing Jeskai control posted an article about his Jeskai control list. In the comments, someone asked him about LoTV as well. It's an SCG premium article but you don't need premium to read the comments. He basically said the same thing as Todd Stevens where in terms of trading resources you as the LoTV player are trading 3 mana for their worst card in their hand. It actually doesn't provide much advantage
Hmm maybe I'm looking at it differently, cause couldn't you make the argument of taking out a land to reduce the chance of drawing a land when you're in a topdeck war? Hm I also never considered taking out a land for aggro and combo matches.
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Bloodbraid Elf
Land (25)
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Wooded Foothills
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
2 Treetop Village
2 Raging Ravine
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Twilight Mire
2 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Abrupt Decay
Sorcery (8)
1 Thoughtseize
1 Dreadbore
2 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
Planeswalkers (5)
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Grim Lavamancer
3 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
2 Nihil Spellbomb
1 Kolaghan's Command
1 Fatal Push
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Thoughtseize
2 Collective Brutality
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Some thoughts on the list
- 3 kcommands and 2 LtLH in the 75 have helped a lot in the midrange matchups. Last Thursday there were 5 Jund and 2 esper midrange players. Today I won a game 3 where my opponent was on 3 life. KCommand to deal 2 damage and return BBE. BBE cascaded into another KCommand
- There are so many Jaces running around in my local meta, with people on Jeskai, Esper, Grixis, and Miracles, so the 2 Maelstrom pulses and dreadbores are nice for that, as well as the 4 creature lands.
- Speaking of creature lands, treetop Village really has done well for me, and I like the 2/2 split between ravine and treetop.
I think for my sideboard I want to go down to 1 ancient grudge, I have the 3 K-commands and I have yet to play against or even see lantern or affinity in my local meta since the unbannings. I'm trying to figure out what to replace the Ancient Grudge with. My initial ideas are either the 2nd fatal push or Anger. Anger would help against some of the small creature matchups that still show up like Elves and Merfolk, but push could help with those matchups as well as the mirror. If anyone has other ideas on what could possibly take that SB slot I'd be interested in hearing it.Best of luck!
What changes do you have in mind so far? Also looking at what you played it seems like theres a lot of control and decks trying to get under, was it that way for the entire store?
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Bloodbraid Elf
Land (25)
1 Treetop Village
1 Twilight Mire
2 Swamp
3 Raging Ravine
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blood Crypt
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Stomping Ground
1 Forest
1 Mountain
3 Bloodstained Mire
1 Blooming Marsh
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Fatal Push
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Terminate
Sorcery (5)
1 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
Planeswalkers (5)
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
1 Grim Lavamancer
3 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Grafdigger's Cage
2 Thoughtseize
2 Collective Brutality
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
I made a single change to add 1 more Nihil Spellbomb to the sideboard and took out the 3rd Ancient Grudge, the main deck was the same.
Anywho, after the quick burn round I looked around the room and noted what everyone was playing. Here is the list that I compiled. Most of these people are regulars so I expect to see most of these decks on the same weekly basis: Mono-U Turns, U/B Turns, U/R Delver w/ Jace, 3x Grixis Control, Naya (BBE, Resto, Knight of the Reliquary), 2x Mono-G Tron, Storm, Living End, 2x Esper Control, 2x Jund, Lantern, 2x Burn, U/B Control, B/G Midrange (Rock), Counters Company, Sultai Midrange, 2x Eldrazi Tron.
With those decks in mind, I wanted to take Reid Duke's list and make some minor tweaks. Here were the tweaks that I was thinking; I'd be happy to hear your guys' opinions:
- For the creature base, it seems like having 3 Scavenging Oozes is worth it, as it acts as GY hate against snapcaster and living end, lifegain against burn and small creature decks. On the other hand, it doesn't match well against the Turns decks, Tron, and Eldrazi Tron, and against the control decks it almost never lives more than 1 turn (either getting Push'd or Bolted), so at times it feels like a 3-drop before it just ends up dying. It could be I don't know how to use scavenging ooze very well; it seems like most of time it eats up a removal spell at times that would've been used on a goyf or bob.
- I felt that the games where I had more discard I was in better shape, which makes me want more discard in the main than the 4 IoK. I'm thinking from the list to cut 1 LtLH, keep 2 KCommands in, put 1 terminate in the side to make room for I'm thinking a collective brutality and a thoughtseize. I also thought about having 3 KCommands but I didn't want my curve to be too high.
- I personally liked 25 lands and will probably want to keep with that. I think I want to replace one of the Bloodstained Mires with a Wooded Foothills, as there were times where I kept seeing Bloodstained Mires and really wanted to get a Forest to preserve life total. I'm going to keep with 2 swamp, 1 forest, 1 mountain for my basic lands, as I didn't see a single Blood Moon in my local meta and I know the Grixis Control decks run Field of Ruin.
- With the amount of control, I wanted to fit a Thrun in the sideboard. Since I put in a thoughtseize in the main, that frees up a space to put a Thrun.
With these changes, here is the list I'm thinking of now.4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
3 Scavenging Ooze
4 Bloodbraid Elf
Land (25)
4 Verdant Catacombs
2 Bloodstained Mire
1 Wooded Foothills
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blooming Marsh
3 Raging Ravine
1 Treetop Village
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Twilight Mire
2 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Fatal Push
1 Abrupt Decay
1 Terminate
Sorcery (7)
1 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Inquisition of Kozilek
1 Collective Brutality
1 Thoughtseize
Planeswalkers (4)
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Grim Lavamancer
3 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Terminate
1 Thoughtseize
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Collective Brutality
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
Not sure if these decisions seem right based on my local meta, so I'd like to get as much input as possible, or if there are tweaks that I haven't mentioned that you think may be good. Thanks for the help!
Did you ever think that you missed the 1 abrupt decay? The main deck that I want to run is similar to yours except I have -1 TS +1 abrupt decay in the main. I also initially had 1 pulse main and 1 pulse side but I'm interested in the idea of having two pulse mainboard since I feel like I'm gonna side it in often. Do you think it's too clunky though?
I'm also concerned about the number of discard in the main. When I was playing against my friend on Grixis Control with Jace I felt that I did better with the hands that had more discard than less. When I sided into duress and more brutalities and saw them I was in a lot better shape.
Nevertheless that's the 75 that I wanna try once they're legal on paper. I have a modern event that I can go to on Tuesday and Thursday so will probably attend both and give the list a shot.
One other thought that I had, do we still want 2 ancient grudges in the side? I don't seem to be siding them in a lot based on sideboard plans, plus now I have 3 KCommands in the main. It also seems like with the increased number of KCommands from both us and Grixis control that Lantern and Affinity will see less play?
So after coming up with the 75 that I'm interested in trying week 1, I tried to come up with sideboard plans for certain matchups, and would like some input on some matchups. Here's the 75 that I'll be working with.
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Dark Confidant
2 Scavenging Ooze
4 Bloodbraid Elf
Land (25)
4 Verdant Catacombs
3 Bloodstained Mire
4 Blackcleave Cliffs
1 Blooming Marsh
3 Raging Ravine
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Blood Crypt
1 Stomping Ground
2 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Mountain
1 Treetop Village
1 Twilight Mire
3 Kolaghan's Command
4 Lightning Bolt
1 Fatal Push
1 Abrupt Decay
2 Terminate
Sorcery (6)
2 Thoughtseize
1 Maelstrom Pulse
1 Collective Brutality
2 Inquisition of Kozilek
Planeswalker (4)
4 Liliana of the Veil
1 Grim Lavamancer
4 Fulminator Mage
1 Kitchen Finks
2 Nihil Spellbomb
2 Ancient Grudge
1 Duress
1 Maelstrom Pulse
2 Collective Brutality
1 Liliana, the Last Hope
The matchups that I'm having trouble figuring out SB plans are for titanshift, grixis control, jeskai control, and u/w control.
For titanshift, cards that could come in are the 4 fulminators, duress, brutalities, pulse, and kitchen finks. Cards that can definitely come out are 1 push and abrupt decay, but I'm not sure where to go after that. Should I start cutting into the kcommands or something else? It seems now with BBE that kcommands are valued more so I guess in general I'm unsure as to when kcommands should go out.
As for the control matchups, there's a lot that I can potentially bring in. The cards that I could bring in for all 3 are the 4 fulminators, kitchen finks, LtLH, brutalities, pulse for JTMS, and duress. The nihil spellbombs can be for jeskai control and especially grixis control with the snap/kcommand looping. probably don't need to bring the spellbombs in against u/w control. Cards I know I can take out are 1 push, 1 abrupt decay, and 2 terminate. I was also thinking of taking out a bloodstained mire since that'll still put me at 24 lands, which doesn't seem bad against control. I'm not sure where to go from there. Some of the options are to shave on IoK and bolts, but is it worth taking out say all 4 bolts and 2 IoK to bring in all the stuff from the sideboard?
Open to suggestions, thanks for the help!
Agree with everything here. I'll probably start with 4 BBE but if I cut down to 3 I can fit in 5 lilis and 2 KCommands, which sounds great. For now going to try 4 BBE, 4 Lilis, and 2 KCommands.