I'd call it bad luck on the mulls, with 15 non-ziggurat lands you have a 93% chance of casting vial on one. Bumping that up to 17 gives you a 96% chance, only a 3% increase. On top of that you have to consider how many times you actually get vial in hand turn one. Simply put there isn't much to be gained here. going the other way, with the standard 12 rainbow lands, you only have 90% chance of having 1B on turn 2 and dropping that to 10 gives you an 84% chance. This also drop the chance of a turn 3 mantis rider from 94% to 90% (the math on this one is a bit inaccurate but you get the idea.
My advice is that you decide to cut ziggurat's you probably want to cut black entirely and go 4 color. In this case, you use Territories, Caverns, canopys and then a fetch - shock manabase.
Back to the 5C vs 4C conversation, I feel that without KCI in the mix and the rise of phoenix decks we want to go back to running freebooter and don't need the sideboard threats from white as much. What does everyone else think? Thalia is also likely to remain an all star.
I feel the decks we need to prep for post board are:
Phoenix (its a bad match up)
Hardened Scales
GBx midrange
To me that means that we want something like
2 Damping Sphere
2 knight of autumn
2 bugler
2 sin collector
Vs tron I keep mayor in 100% since we really want to race them. Our best hands are where they can't land turn 3 tron (or only get out a karn)
I usually cut reflector mage for path, and meddling for stony. Tron is a hard deck to use mage against (without kitesail) because all of their cards do the same thing.
Damping is hard maybe for me. I slows tron down but you can't count on it without a good clock.
Ovverall tron is a fairly tough match up post board as we need one our faster draws and we still lose to O-stone.
If you read back the last few pages Lavinia is a possibility as an easier to cast but less effective Gaddock Teeg. Judith and Hero are duds though. Judith's 2nd text isn't as relevant as people think and her first effect just makes her a worse Mayor or Marshal. Hero is another pass I think since he is a non-bo with Aether vial and we don't have that many multi-colored cards to start with.
Grand Abolisher was dismissed in the way back. It just doesn't looking good next to our current hate bears.
Does he really like tireless tracker that much? It feels bad in a deck that only runs 20 lands and usually wants to close things quickly. I can see it running away with a game but not through any interaction, I would rather have bugler. Liked to see him do well with burn despite the painful manabase.
I've been testing a version like that recently. I'm still not running CoCO since I think it has been show multiple times that Humans isn't a great CoCO deck due to our relative lack of 3 drops and reactive cards. There are actually two decisions here.
1. Do you drop kitesail freebooter to run mayor of avabruck and venser mainboard.
2. Given that do you want to drop your gold mana base for a shockland one to run real sideboard cards.
Now aside from that, I am loving shocklands. They are a bit painful since you basically start each game with ~15 life rather than 20. The upside is that you get to run real side board cards like path, rip and stony silence.
I really love the change though. Game one you get to try to cheese wins with the extra lords and games 2 and 3 you get powerful hate cards to stop your opponent.
Hero of Precint One seems like a trap. While it has a great effect for both grindy and racing match ups the problem is that triggering it is really hard. Most of my lists only run 3 reflector mages so their are only 11 main deck ways to trigger it. We do get additional multi-colored cards post side board but the aether vial non-bo is real. Not to mention that it playing this really makes me want to run another lord card. Overall I can't see us playing it unless we get a main-deckable multi-colored one or two drop to make triggering it more reliable.
Its really too bad that it wasn't based on a creature etb or something similar.
For the time being, I think I would rather have mayor of avabruck since his token producing ability is much easier to turn on and produces larger tokens.
Tried out the hot bant humans list. Unfortunately the quality of competition was pretty low today and I didn't get to play vs UR Phoenix, Hardened Scales or Hollow One. I also didn't get to play vs KCI but I wasn't expecting to as people don't play that digitally.
The good:
Having real sideboard cards felt amazing. I won a match vs goryo's vengeance with RIP and vs Tron with Stony Silence
Having mayor was amazing, mayor and bugler really helped out vs GB midrange as I could play for the long game.
Venser also put in some work, half the time acting as Reflector Mage #4 and as a counter spell. He saved my butt when I forgot to play around settle the wreckage.
The bad
Now that the manabase is all fetch-shock, I took a lot of damage from my mana, usually 4-6 per game. This would give a terrible burn match up and could hurt my ability to race UR Phoenix, Hollow One, etc (which was 50% of the reason I wanted to try this version)
Not knowing what to name with meddling mage, especially game one is not fun, I whiffed with it a lot more than when I could use freebooter to get a peek
One final note is that this version of humans play differently from the 5C version in that game one you are really trying to cheese a win without interacting and then games 2 and 3 my plans relied heavily on leaning on powerful sideboard hate to carry the game.
On the Judith question, I think I would rather run mayor since he is cheaper, easier on the mana, and I think that Judith's second ability doesn't hold up well vs Anger of the Gods or Terminus and she can always just be removed before a board wipe.
Also, to follow up on the Hot Bant discussion, I found an okay manabase to run consisting of
A few notes on this manabase:
1. You will need to occasionally name illusion or Kithkin with cavern if you want to cast Teeg and Image on curve as you may not have enough sources otherwise (although Frank Kartsen ignores the impact of aether vial in his math, so that helps)
2. You similarly might have times when you can't cast your sideboard hate on curve.
3. This is now a pretty painful mana base. This is really unfortunate as part of what prompted me to go for hot bant was to get a better match up vs linear decks but dealing 4-6 damage to yourself every game kinda hurts that.
Now I am working on the rest of the main board and the sideboard. For this I am taking a lot of inspiration from this list that got 2nd at an IQ. I will do some testing online over the weekend and report back.
The main reason to go "hot bant" is the sideboard options so I doubt playing all 8 gold lands make sense. Addition I would probably not look to be running vial and coco in the same deck since there are way too many whiffs.
Anyone got a list for the bant or "hot bant" versions of this deck? I'd love to sleeve up a copy to try it out but I can't find a list. Specifically on the changes to the mana base as subbing out Kitesail for Mayor seems like the only main board change.
What do you take out MD? Removing one our threats feels bad as does removing freebooter, Meddling Mage, or Reflector Mage. I've already cut down to 3 Thalia for 3 flex but Im not sure if I like Lavinia over Militia Bugler game 1 and even bugler might be losing his slot for tithe taker.
EDIT: Nevermind, about tithe taker. For some reason, I thought it had first strike. It might still be good but I think it is sideboard only.
I have had it happen but it hasn't mattered too much to me. Bugler still counts for 2 bodies which taxes removal better. I can really only see it mattering when we are trying to race a need a flying blocker.
Big B&R list update today. If they ban anything out of humans I will be pretty sad since humans wasn't even in the top 16 of GP Barcelona or the top 32 of the SCG open. Also hoping no SFM unban though I would be fine if they banned stirrings or unbanned GSZ.
That said after a bit of moping about no good humans in M19, I think militia bugler is going to be fairly decent (at least in the board). I played against it a few times in standard and what impressed me the most about it was that it digs for answers. I think one issue with humans previously has been that since we only see 12 cards a game we don't always draw our sideboard cards and I think bugler can help us dig for them. Personally, I don't run anything with more than 2 power in my board.
Since the mainboard has been pretty set recently (except for dropping a thalia, guardian of thraben so you can run kessig malcontents and Restoration Angel), what are people thinking about the side board. According to mtgogoldish the meta side board is:
This makes it seem like people are bailing on graveyard hate in favor of creature and artifact hate. My side board is a bit different as load up a bit more for control match ups with :
I don't think mine is necessarily perfect but I wonder what happened to the anti control and graveyard cards.
Is the current plan to avoid control and dredge in the match ups? Based on sidebaords it seems we are throwing away the Tron match up.
On that note I would love to see someone break down the favord/even/unfavored match ups for the deck as I am still learning it and I am unsure if my wins are due to my deckbuilding choices or my opponents poor play.
My advice is that you decide to cut ziggurat's you probably want to cut black entirely and go 4 color. In this case, you use Territories, Caverns, canopys and then a fetch - shock manabase.
I feel the decks we need to prep for post board are:
Phoenix (its a bad match up)
Hardened Scales
GBx midrange
To me that means that we want something like
2 Damping Sphere
2 knight of autumn
2 bugler
2 sin collector
I usually cut reflector mage for path, and meddling for stony. Tron is a hard deck to use mage against (without kitesail) because all of their cards do the same thing.
Damping is hard maybe for me. I slows tron down but you can't count on it without a good clock.
Ovverall tron is a fairly tough match up post board as we need one our faster draws and we still lose to O-stone.
Grand Abolisher was dismissed in the way back. It just doesn't looking good next to our current hate bears.
1. Do you drop kitesail freebooter to run mayor of avabruck and venser mainboard.
2. Given that do you want to drop your gold mana base for a shockland one to run real sideboard cards.
Now aside from that, I am loving shocklands. They are a bit painful since you basically start each game with ~15 life rather than 20. The upside is that you get to run real side board cards like path, rip and stony silence.
I really love the change though. Game one you get to try to cheese wins with the extra lords and games 2 and 3 you get powerful hate cards to stop your opponent.
Its really too bad that it wasn't based on a creature etb or something similar.
For the time being, I think I would rather have mayor of avabruck since his token producing ability is much easier to turn on and produces larger tokens.
The good:
Having real sideboard cards felt amazing. I won a match vs goryo's vengeance with RIP and vs Tron with Stony Silence
Having mayor was amazing, mayor and bugler really helped out vs GB midrange as I could play for the long game.
Venser also put in some work, half the time acting as Reflector Mage #4 and as a counter spell. He saved my butt when I forgot to play around settle the wreckage.
The bad
Now that the manabase is all fetch-shock, I took a lot of damage from my mana, usually 4-6 per game. This would give a terrible burn match up and could hurt my ability to race UR Phoenix, Hollow One, etc (which was 50% of the reason I wanted to try this version)
Not knowing what to name with meddling mage, especially game one is not fun, I whiffed with it a lot more than when I could use freebooter to get a peek
One final note is that this version of humans play differently from the 5C version in that game one you are really trying to cheese a win without interacting and then games 2 and 3 my plans relied heavily on leaning on powerful sideboard hate to carry the game.
For reference my full list
was
4 Cavern of Souls
4 Horizon Canopy
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Steam Vents
1 Breeding Pool
1 Stomping Ground
3 Windswept Heath
1 Plains
1 Forest
4 Champion of the Parish
4 Noble Hierarch
4 Mayor of Avabruck
4 Phantasmal Image
4 Meddling Mage
4 Thalia's Lieutenant
4 Thalia, Guardian of Thraben
4 Mantis Rider
3 Reflector Mage
2 Venser, Shaper Savant
4 Aether Vial
1 Knight of Autumn
2 Rest in Peace
2 Stony Silence
2 Gaddock Teeg
2 Tajic, Legion's Edge
3 Militia Bugler
3 Path to Exile
Also, to follow up on the Hot Bant discussion, I found an okay manabase to run consisting of
1 Sacred Foundry
1 Steam Vents
1 Breeding Pool
1 Stomping Ground
4 Windswept Heath
4 Cavern
1 Plains
1 Forest
4 Horizon Canopy
A few notes on this manabase:
1. You will need to occasionally name illusion or Kithkin with cavern if you want to cast Teeg and Image on curve as you may not have enough sources otherwise (although Frank Kartsen ignores the impact of aether vial in his math, so that helps)
2. You similarly might have times when you can't cast your sideboard hate on curve.
3. This is now a pretty painful mana base. This is really unfortunate as part of what prompted me to go for hot bant was to get a better match up vs linear decks but dealing 4-6 damage to yourself every game kinda hurts that.
Now I am working on the rest of the main board and the sideboard. For this I am taking a lot of inspiration from this list that got 2nd at an IQ. I will do some testing online over the weekend and report back.
EDIT: Nevermind, about tithe taker. For some reason, I thought it had first strike. It might still be good but I think it is sideboard only.
That said after a bit of moping about no good humans in M19, I think militia bugler is going to be fairly decent (at least in the board). I played against it a few times in standard and what impressed me the most about it was that it digs for answers. I think one issue with humans previously has been that since we only see 12 cards a game we don't always draw our sideboard cards and I think bugler can help us dig for them. Personally, I don't run anything with more than 2 power in my board.
This makes it seem like people are bailing on graveyard hate in favor of creature and artifact hate. My side board is a bit different as load up a bit more for control match ups with :
I don't think mine is necessarily perfect but I wonder what happened to the anti control and graveyard cards.
Is the current plan to avoid control and dredge in the match ups? Based on sidebaords it seems we are throwing away the Tron match up.
On that note I would love to see someone break down the favord/even/unfavored match ups for the deck as I am still learning it and I am unsure if my wins are due to my deckbuilding choices or my opponents poor play.